Posted by Alexander Halser on November 25, 2023
Within the last two months, we received several request from current Confluence users considering to switch from their current tool to Help+Manual. That’s a lot for such a short time frame. Obviously, something’s going on at Atlassian Confluence that doesn’t make their users all too happy.
Importing content from a web-based solution like Confluence is not exactly simple. So, we decided to implement a dedicated import. It’s already working in the current beta of Help+Manual, but we need additional real content to fine-tune the conversion of Confluence macros, because the documentation of these macros is scarce.
If you know a fellow tech writer who’s currently using Confluence and considers switching, please spread the word! We’d like to get in contact with them and offer free personal licenses for the first three users who provide us with examples of Confluence macros actually in use and not yet supported by the new import.
If you would like to try the Confluence import yourself, you can download a beta version of Help+Manual 9.4 here.
Posted by Alexander Halser on November 23, 2023
We are glad to announce the release of HelpXplain 1.8.0. If your maintenance plan for HelpXplain includes the release date (Nov 23, 2023), this is a free update. The quickest way to find out, is to start HelpXplain and click Help > Check for Update.
We have implemented a favorites tool, where you can store objects that you want to re-insert regularly. This is a very comfortable function to store customized objects and have them ready for insertion whenever you need them. Favorites are stored in a hidden Xplain file, which you can open and edit to modify your favorites list.
The second really convenient new function is a Format Painter. It works in the very same way as it does in Help+Manual, or in MS Office.
All updates are available from our download page. Download and install the update over your existing version of HelpXplain.
Posted by tim green on November 20, 2023
From November 20th – 27th is Black Week for EC Software products. You get a 25% discount on everything at checkout, on top of any volume or bundle discounts. So head on over to the store and start saving:
Posted by Alexander Halser on October 21, 2023
We are glad to announce the release of HelpXplain 1.7.1. If your maintenance plan for HelpXplain includes the release date (October 21, 2023), this is a free update. The quickest way to find out, is to start HelpXplain and click Help > Check for Update.
This is a small update with just a couple of new features:
All updates are available from our download page. Download and install the update over your existing version of HelpXplain.
Posted by Alexander Halser on October 19, 2023
We are glad to announce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 9.3.
This maintenance update implements Ziphelp support for the HTML5/Webhelp output. Furthermore, it includes the recently released eWriter Viewer 4.0.
Ziphelp is basically HTML5 in a zip archive with an additional Ziphelp sitemap. You can enable Ziphelp sitemap support by checking the corresponding option in the HTML5/Webhelp publishing configuration:
All updates are available from our download page.
Posted by tim green on September 26, 2023
Soluling is a powerful new translation tool for Help+Manual projects, software user interfaces, web content and much more. It offers a unique combination of support for multiple machine translation services with human translators, along with translation and terminology memory. The most important points for Help+Manual users are:
For more information and downloads visit the Soluling website at https://www.soluling.com/.
Translating Help+Manual projects in Soluling is a simple process. Basically, you point the program at a HMXP project and it loads the project tree and its content in a spreadsheet-like interface. You can translate manually directly in the right column. Or if you are using machine translation you right-click in the empty target language column and choose your configured translation service. Similarly, you can also use your translation memory there once it has been set up. Any XML tags within the paragraphs are shown, but this doesn’t trip the system up. Sentences are always handled as entire units, no matter how many sub-tags they contain. This is a pleasant contrast to some other XML-based translation tools.
Translating a HM project in Soluling
The spreadsheet paradigm makes bulk translation very simple. For a topic you select the topic file, press CTRL+A in the target column to select everything, then right-click and select your translation service or your translation memory. Translating the entire project with a single click works in the same way: Selecting the project name at the top of the tree on the left displays all the translatable elements in the entire project on the right. Then you just select them all and choose your translation service or your translation memory.
The integration of translation and terminology memory is another major feature of Soluling. Once you are satisfied with your translation you can save it to the integrated translation memory database for your project. When the Help+Manual project is updated you just need to apply the translation memory to get perfect translations for all the text that hasn’t changed. Then you only need to work on what is new and changed.
By default, translation memory works with sentences as the basic unit, but you can also configure Soluling to handle phrases and other meaningful language units in the translation memory. It is extensively and minutely configurable, like everything else in this impressive tool. And in addition to your own translation memory database, Soluling can also integrate the Microsoft Terminology Service and the MyMemory translation memory service.
Similarly, you can also configure a terminology database that will automatically translate any defined terms in the predefined way for maximum consistency. And here too, you can combine your own database with the Microsoft Terminology Service.
Soluling supports working on your translation projects in teams. You can generate Soluling packages to send to multiple translators and then integrate their results into your main project. And the translation memory and terminology databases can be maintained as cloud-based versions so that all translators can access them directly.
This goes beyond the scope of this review, but as already mentioned, Soluling isn’t only for translating Help+Manual projects, web content and a total of over 100 other different input formats. It is also a full software localization tool, with a complete set of powerful and configurable features for translating and localizing the entire user interface of your application. Visit the Soluling website for more information on this.
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.