The examples all assume that you are entering the command lines in the Help+Manual program directory. When you do this you must only enter a path for the project file. All the other file name arguments automatically use this path so you don't need to enter a path for them if they are stored in the project directory.

However, you must enter path information for all files stored in any other location. You can use relative paths if you want – they are then relative to the project directory.

If you store your batch files in the project directory then you only need to enter the path to the HELPMAN.EXE program (or you can add HELPMAN.EXE to your system PATH variable and then you don't need to enter a path for that either).

This is the simplest possible command. It just starts Help+Manual and loads the specified project file. This is rather pointless on its own but it illustrates how the command line is used.

•Switch to the Help+Manual program directory and enter the following command, replacing F:\My Projects\ with the path to your project file and projectfile.hmxz with your project file name, which can be an .hmxp or an .hmxz file:

HELPMAN.EXE "F:\My Projects\projectfile.hmxz"

•Note the use of quotes! Since the project path contains a space it must be enclosed in quotes. The same applies for any file names in the command line that contain spaces.

To publish a project from the command you just need to add an additional command known as a "switch" to specify the output format you want to use. The following example compiles the project to an HTML Help CHM file, using the last output location and file name you used when you published manually.

See the Syntax reference for details of the available output format switches.

HELPMAN.EXE "F:\My Projects\projectfile.hmxz" /CHM

The output format switch must always be the first switch after the project file name. All the other switches can come in any order but they must be after the output format switch. The only exception here is the /TSK switch for publishing predefined publishing tasks, which can be used on its own without any other switches. See Output to multiple formats for details.

Note the use of quotes! All paths and file names that contain spaces must be enclosed in quotes.

To publish a project to a different location and file name just add them to the output format switch with an equals sign:

HELPMAN.EXE "F:\My Projects\projectfile.hmxz" /CHM="F:\My Projects\Help\WidgetHelp.chm"

If you don't enter the output filename and path the last values used when publishing manually from Help+Manual will be used.

Note the use of quotes! All paths and file names that contain spaces must be enclosed in quotes.

The following examples generate PDF files with an explicitly-specified print manual template. The first example assumes that the print manual template is stored in the project directory. The second example gets the template from the \Templates\Pdf folder in the Help+Manual program directory.

Example 1:

HELPMAN.EXE "D:\Help Project\MyHelp.hmxz" /PDF=widget.pdf /Template=a4_template.mnl

Example 2:

HELPMAN.EXE "D:\Help Project\MyHelp.hmxz" /PDF=widget.pdf /Template="C:\Program Files\EC Software\HelpAndManual8Templates\Pdf\widget.mnl"