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Help+Manual 9.7 and Translation Assistant 9.7 with new DeepL-API

Posted by Alexander Halser in Help+Manual, Help+Manual Translation Assistant, PDF, Software Updates on February 12, 2025

We are glad to announce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 9.7 and an updated Translation Assistant. This is in fact quite a large update, although most of the changes remain mostly “invisible”.

The most important change concerns the DeepL translation plugin and the DeepL bulk translation function in the Translation Assistant. Both applications have switched to the latest version of the DeepL translation API.

In order to keep working with the DeepL translation plugin, you must update to Help+Manual 9.7 and Translation Assistant 9.7. DeepL will soon retire their old translation API.

Help+Manual 9.7 Changes

  • DeepL: new API implemented.
  • DeepL: new option included to change from “non-splitting-tags” to explicit “splitting-tags”.
  • DeepL: the editor for API glossaries now shows line numbers. If there are any duplicates in the list, it jumps to the corresponding line number.
  • DeepL: protected word lists and API glossaries are saved as UTF-8 text when exported within the dialog box.
  • DeepL: translating single TOC entries included a line break in the translation, which created problems when building breadcrumb tags for the HTML output, because the line break was preserved in the breadcrumb tag.
  • SnipSVG images: when using the native .SnipX format in Help+Manual, these images are translated into SVG images in the HTML output and are implemented with an <object> tag. Embedding SVGs with an  <object> tag is mandatory to for interactive SVG files. The converter has been updated to version 2.0 in order to support animated SVG files created by the (upcoming) SnipSVG 2.0.
  • Equations: the entry box for the equation how has a vertical scrollbar for extra long equations. When inserting a new equation, the initial dummy text “a = x + y” is highlighted and the edit control is active, so the user can start typing right away.
  • Equations: improved vertical placement in HTML, both when exported as inline SVG and PNG. The inline SVG has been upscaled to a multiplier of 8 instead of 4, resulting in smoother curves.
  • Markdown Snippets and Load-topic-from-Markdown: Markdown headings are now auto-imported as anchors, the anchor ID is built according to the Microsoft standard for Github. (Markdown does not have anchors as we know them from HTML, but some Markdown interpreters consider headings as valid anchors, with an auto-converted ID.) With this change, it is now possible to deep-link into the content of Markdown snippets.
  • Insert Anchor dialog: the dialog box is now sizeable.
  • The WEBP library ECLibWebp.dll is loaded dynamically. This speeds up the start of H&M, because the DLL is loaded on demand only (when the first webp image needs to be decoded).
  • eViewer 5.3 included.
  • Project Report: includes help context numbers of master/child projects.
  • HTML Export: videos – including web videos like youtube – always contained an outer div with the class name <div class=”video-lightbox” …>. Inline videos did not have a class name. Change: inline videos now have <div class=”video-inline” …> and both have an additional HTML class “flexwidthXXX”.
  • HTML Export: if a Youtube video specified a poster image, but the image file was missing, this caused a silent error.
  • HTML Export / ARIA: to improve accessibility, manually bold formatted text is exported with a <strong> tag (instead of <span>), manually italic formatted text is exported with an <em> tag instead of <span>. You will not see any differerence in the HTML output, but these tags are interpreted differently by screen readers.
  • HTML Export (CHM only): for YouTube and Vimeo web videos, Help+Manual does not use lightboxes anymore, but redirects to an external browser window. This was already the case for Prezi presentations. All of them, YouTube, Vimeo and Prezi have given up support for Internet Explorer (the display engine in CHMs). To prevent inevitable Javascript errors with web videos, the CHM file opens a new window in the default web browser to run the video.
  • PDF export: when exporting SVG images as PNG (because they include drawing commands, which cannot be translated to PDF), the SVG image is rendered larger than displayed to get a better PNG quality. This might increase the PDF size in some cases.
  • PDF export: if the very last page (back cover) of a manual template contained a PDF snippet, the PDF export failed with an error.

Help+Manual Translation Assistant 9.7 Changes

  • DeepL: new API implemented.
  • DeepL: new option included to change from “non-splitting-tags” to explicit “splitting-tags”.
  • DeepL: the editor for API glossaries now shows line numbers. If there are any duplicates in the list, it jumps to the corresponding line number.
  • DeepL: protected word lists and API glossaries are saved as UTF-8 text when exported within the dialog box.
  • Topic editor: improved mouse-hints for inline text toggles.
  • Image hotspot editor: asks to save changes, if the dialog is canceled after changes have been made.

 

All updates are available from our download page.

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Help+Manual 9.6 and Translation Assistant Maintenance Update

Posted by Alexander Halser in Help+Manual, Help+Manual Translation Assistant, Software Updates on September 19, 2024

We are glad to announce the immediate availability of Help+Manual 9.6 and an updated Translation Assistant.

Most of the changes in this update relate to HTML export and import, with several small improvements of the user interface. HTML export (that includes Webhelp, CHMs, ePUB and eWriter formats) is using a lot more ARIA tags to comply with accessible HTML standards.

Help+Manual 9.6 Changes

  • Screen Capture: while selecting the capture area with the mouse, the mouse position can be moved by simply pressing the arrows keys. This is helpful on high resolution displays to fine-position the mouse pointer to the edge of a window.
  • Screencast: the options dialog for screencasts includes a new option: Enlarge cursor icon.
  • Image hotspot editor asks to save changes, if the dialog is canceled after changes have been made.
  • Topic Editor: when using TAB or SHIFT+TAB in a numbered list or bullet list, this increases or decreases the list level, respectively.
  • Topic Editor, Zoom: the zoom trackbar got a right-click menu with typical zoom values.
  • Editor Style Dropdown: the dropdown list for the style combo box was too long  in some cases and may have exceeded the screen height.
  • For new help projects, the spelling check exclusion of style “Code Format” is now true by default.
  • HTML Export (Webhelp, CHM, eWriter):
    • SNIPX images that are going to be exported as SVG now use the <object> tag instead of the <img> tag. This enables embedded animated SVGs and object links inside the SNIPX file.
    • Images, toggle images, videos and Xplains with captions are exported with a <figure> and <figcaption> combination. This also works for images with caption that do not have an ID. The <figure> and <figcaption> tags are wrapper tags around the image and are compatible even with very old browsers.
    • Math objects (equations) exported as SVG are written with ARIA role=”math”.
    • QR code objects are written an alt attribute: alt=”<datastring>”.
    • For all videos, the <iframe> tag now has a title attribute (taken from the video caption or alt value).
    • HTML skins and standard templates: ARIA landmark tags and roles added to all standard skins. (If you use customized skins, you may optionally update them.)
    • Standard responsive Webhelp Skins: small change to the search script to always focus the search box when the search page gets loaded.
    • HTML Help (.chm) export: if a project included Helpxplain slideshows and the temporary folder for the CHM output was not empty (because it was not deleted after a prior export), this skipped the export of this Xplain (which was correct), but did not include the Xplain in the .HHP file, either (which was wrong).
    • eWriter Export: if the specified custom icon file was missing, the error was reported during compilation, but the .ewriter file could not be displayed because of the missing icon.
  • HTML Import (affecting CHM/HTML5/Robohelp import):
    • Improved copy & paste of HTML code from the Windows clipboard.
    • CHM Import:  better support for HHCTRL ActiveX objects. If a link uses a “related topics” HHCTRL control to jump to another topic, these links are resolved. Some Doc-to-Help projects contain such links.
    • The title attribute of links is imported and assigned.
    • HTML CSS with class names is split up into Help+Manual style templates . This results in significantly less inline CSS.
  • Word/DocX Export:improved export of file links. External file links are now exported without a “file://” prefix, similar to MS Word.
  • PDF Export/Print: if an index keyword has so many page references that the text doesn’t fit in one line, the justified text option is removed for this keyword and all text is printed left-aligned.
  • Update Build 6804 (Sept 24, 2024): the executable of build 6802 contained an invalid manifest file, resulting in bad scaling on high-dpi monitors.

Help+Manual Translation Assistant 9.6 Changes

  • Windows 10 long path names enabled in manifest file.
  • DeepL: brackets (< >) in image captions (for instance: variables) stayed escaped after translation resulting in text like “&lt;%VAR%&gt;” instead of “<%VAR%>”.
  • DeepL: the error message “Please note: TSL 1.2 encryption is required for communication with DeepL.” had raised a different formatting error instead of displaying the error message.
  • The image hotspot editor asks to save changes, if the dialog is canceled after changes have been made.

All updates are available from our download page.

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EC Software Black Friday Week: 25% off on everything

Posted by tim green in Help+Manual, Help+Manual Translation Assistant, HelpXplain 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:

EC Software Online Store

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