After creating your project it's a good idea go through the Configuration section of your project in the Project Explorer and check all your basic settings, which are initially set to default values. You can change these settings at any time, but some are easy to forget, like the help title, window titles and copyright information and so it's a good idea to get into the habit of doing a check whenever you start a new project.
This topic lists the basic settings in Configuration that you should always check when you create a new project. The other sections are also important but these generally contain things that you will edit while working on or publishing your project. For full details see the Project Configuration chapter.
Your work is the most valuable thing on your computer. When setting up a project, always make sure that you will have backups of your work in the case of an emergency. Ideally, your backups should be on a different computer, or at the very least on an external drive. Then if something catastrophic happens to your machine, you will be able to recover your work from the backup.
Note that if you are ever unable to save your current work, for example when you lose a network connection, Help+Manual will automatically enable you to save a special rescue copy containing only those topics that have been edited since the last save.
In addition to this, your unsaved edits are also saved to an ongoing background backup. If you experience a Windows or other system crash so that Help+Manual itself is no longer available, you will be prompted to restore your unsaved changes from the backup the next time you open the project.
Check out Backups and Emergencies to learn about this and other backup options so that you are prepared to recover your valuable project work if something ever goes badly wrong on your computer.
|
The first thing you want to do is to enter the title of your project, the name of the author, your copyright notice and so on.
•Select Title & Copyright in in the Project Explorer.
•Enter your details. You can insert the version numbers and other information you store here in your project topics with variables – see here for a list.
See Title & Copyright in the chapter for details on the settings.
|
The default topic in your help is the topic that is automatically displayed when the help is opened in HTML Help, WebHelp, Visual Studio Help (MS Help 2.0 and MS Help 3.0) and eWriter Help for Windows and MacOS (this feature is not supported in Apple iBooks®/ePUB eBooks). If you don't set a topic the help will open at the first topic containing text in your TOC.
1.Select Title & Copyright in
2.Select the topic ID of the default topic in the Default Topic: field.
Tip: You can also use a user-defined text variable instead of entering the topic ID here directly.
|
One of the most important things to check is your language settings. Help+Manual supports almost all international languages but you need to make sure that your project is configured correctly to handle the language you are using, even if it is English or a common Western European language.
See International languages setup for full details!
|
You probably want the Help Title you enter in Title & Copyright section of Project Configuration to be displayed in the title bar of your published help in HTML Help. This is normally done with the <%TITLE%> variable but you can also enter a different text manually if you like.
Important: This setting is only for HTML Help (CHM) output files. All other output formats where the title is relevant take the title directly from the Title & Copyright section.
1.Select Help Windows in
2.Click on the name of the help window whose title you want to change. If you have not defined any additional help windows only the standard Main help window type will be displayed. See Using secondary windows for more information.
3.In the General tab, check that the <%TITLE%> variable is entered in the Title bar text: field. If it is not just type it in manually. Alternatively you can type in a title manually but this will not be updated automatically if you change your project title.
See Help Windows and Help Windows Settings in the Reference section background information.
|
All the output formats you can generate with Help+Manual can be customized with a large number of options in your Project Configuration. You will only need to check and adjust the settings for the formats you are actually going to use, of course.
See Configuring Your Output and Project Configuration chapter for details on all the individual settings in these sections.
|
See also:
Project Configuration
Configuring your Output
Using help windows
Templates and Secondary Windows
