Posted by Alexander Halser on September 18, 2023
We have updated eWriter Viewer to version 4. Both, the Windows and MacOS versions are available from the eWriter download page. Viewer redistributables have been updated as well:
https://www.helpandmanual.com/ewriter/
On the surface, Ziphelp is HTML5 in a zip archive. Pack any folder with HTML pages into a regular zip file, rename the extension to “.zhelp” and the eWriter viewer will open it. This not just works for Help+Manual’s Webhelp output, but for any HTML.
But Ziphelp is more than that, it is a protocol based on the standard sitemap protocol, designed to give a help viewer extended information about the content of the help system, in order to provide context-sensitive help to an application. Locally, on the web, and mixed.
Posted by Alexander Halser on August 12, 2023
We are glad to announce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 9.2 and Translation Assistant 9.2!
This maintenance update is mostly about convenience functions. Take the Find & Replace dialog as an example: the selection of the search range are now 3 buttons instead of a combo box and for text searches in the current topic, a “wrap around” option has been added.
All updates are available from our download page.
Posted by tim green on July 12, 2023
We’re glad to announce the update of the Help+Manual Premium Pack add-on to version 5.1.0. This update includes a number of small but significant improvements to almost all the skins and is recommended for all users.
You can download and install the update with the link and credentials you received when you purchased. If you no longer have these, just contact support by email and we will help you out.
Posted by Alexander Halser on July 2, 2023
We are glad to announce the release of HelpXplain 1.7. If your maintenance plan for HelpXplain includes the release date (July 2, 2023), this is a free update. The quickest way to find out, is to start HelpXplain and click Help > Check for Update.
We haven’t had many updates of HelpXplain in the last 2 years, it stood back behind Help+Manual and the Translation Assistant. That’s going to change, because we have several plans with HelpXplain.
For one thing, we are working on a new screenshot editor that’s going to replace Impict, which has been shipping with Help+Manual for many years. The new screenshot editor with seamless integration into Help+Manual will be based on the library of HelpXplain. The new save-as-SVG function (see below) is one leg of that journey.
Despite this is just a point update, there are several new features:
The really big news are new numbering tags with auto-numbering and callouts with support for multiple pointers. Internally, the numbering tags are treated like callouts and support multiple pointers as well:
Another new feature is a little bit hidden, but nonetheless an important one. HelpXplain can export a single slide in SVG format, in addition to PNG/JPEG/etc. SVG is a scalable vector graphic that you can use on any web page, including documentation created with Help+Manual. HelpXplain embeds all data from the slide and creates a single SVG file with no external dependencies. The beauty of SVG is that it freely scales, which means that the content of the picture scales to whatever resolution is required.
All updates are available from our download page. Download and install the update over your existing version of HelpXplain.
Posted by tim green on May 11, 2023
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been testing Help+Manual and related tools on the latest version of Windows 11 for ARM running on an M1 Mac under the new Parallels 18 virtual machine program.
I can cautiously recommend Parallels 18 for running Help+Manual and its necessary helper programs under the current and latest version of Windows 11 for ARM. Earlier versions of Windows 11 ARM and earlier versions of Parallels will NOT work satisfactorily, but these latest versions appear to be surprisingly good.
Warning: It is still early days, so this recommendation remains cautious. Even though everything appears to be stable, I still wouldn’t yet depend on it if I was buying a new computer as my only machine. However, I would already feel pretty good about using this as a second machine, provided I had a genuine, Intel-based Windows machine as a backup.
Posted by tim green on April 27, 2023
We have released a small update of Premium Pack 5 to version 5.0.4 with some maintenance changes and minor improvements.
You can download and install the update with the link and credentials you received when you purchased. If you no longer have these, just contact support by email and we will help you out.
Posted by Alexander Halser on April 8, 2023
We are glad to announce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 9.1 and Translation Assistant 9.1.
All updates are available from our download page.
Posted by tim green on February 24, 2023
A while ago we reported about the online HM-based technical writing courses offered by Subash Sarath via his site Learn Tech Writing Fast. In the meantime, Subash has produced a video course that is now available on YouTube free of charge. You can access the course on his YouTube channel here (click the image to visit):
We should note that this is a fully independent production in which we did not participate ourselves. We would be interested to hear any feedback, which you can send to the regular EC Software support address or post on the user forum.
Posted by Alexander Halser on February 14, 2023
We updated our free converter from HTML Help to Qt Help for compatibility with Qt 6.x.
QtHelpConverter takes a compiled HTML Help/CHM file and outputs Qt help (.qch).
Download:
Posted by Alexander Halser on February 9, 2023
We are glad to announce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 9.03 and Translation Assistant 9.03.
All updates are available from our download page.