We are glad to announce a maintenance update for Help+Manual 8.5. If you are using version 8 already and your maintenance plan includes updates until August 21, 2022, just download the setup and run it to update your current installation.

Changes in 8.5 Build 5980

• eWriter Export Format: we recently released the redistributable eWriter Viewer 3.0 for Windows and MacOS.

  Help+Manual v8.5 includes the new eWriter Viewer 3.0 (32 bit) to create stand-alone EXE e-books and the configuration page for eWriter export has new export options: a product logo (shown on MacOS and Windows) and menu options for MacOS.

  Please note that some export options for the eWriter format are depricated with the updated viewer and have been moved to the new command line options. 

• Snagit: we have added direct support for TechSmith Snagit® 2022 cross-platform file format “.snagx”. The .snagX format is the (editable) compound image format containing the original screenshot, annotations and modifications. Help+Manual can load a .snagX picture directly and treats it like a PNG file.

  Please note: the new compound .snagX format is available with Snagit 2022 only. This file format is different to the old .snag file format. 

• Publish dialog: the publishing tasks frame now responds to the mouse wheel
• Screen Capture tool (bugfix): when doing a screen capture on a different monitor than the primary monitor, the cursor icon was not included.
• Bulk Find & Replace: the “replace all” function (internally using an XML scanner) has unintentionally removed non-breaking spaces (#160) from the source.

Download

Help+Manual 8.5 is available from our download page:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html

We are glad to announce a maintenance update for Help+Manual 8.4. If you are using version 8 already and your maintenance plan includes updates until February 4, 2022, just download the setup and run it to update your current installation.

Changes in 8.4.3 Build 5940

• SVG images: loading of SVG images with embedded base64-encoded image data is now faster. Bugfix for images with base64-encoded embedded data that was split into junks.
• Screen Capture tool: optical glitches fixed in screen capture UI, when Windows UI style was set to “classic” Win2000 style (this causes Windows to switch off Aero and transparent drawing, which parts of the UI have relied on).
• The color dialogs for table color and font/background color were changed to a new dialog that supports an entry box for HTML-style color codes.

Bug fixes

• Copy topics/TOC entries: when topics copied from another project were tagged with build tags not present in the target project, H&M asked to extend the list of build tags. This extension went wrong and the custom build list got damaged.
• eWriter Export: icon file could not be updated when the output file was an executable (.exe).

Download

Help+Manual 8.4.3 is available from our download page:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html

We are glad to announce a maintenance update for Help+Manual 8.4. If you are using version 8 already and your maintenance plan includes updates until December 17, 2021, just download the setup and run it to update your current installation.

Sandcastle Import Revised

To write source code documentation for Visual Studio, Help+Manual can import VS libraries and build a documentation skeleton for all the classes and units found. The import tool is called Microsoft Sandcastle.

This update includes a revised Sandcastle import with better style support, larger default fonts and optional table styles.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Windows Meta Files (.WMF) on high-resolution monitors: WMF images have a face value of their regular size, which is actually coined for a 96 dpi system. On high-res systems, WMF files will appear larger than they originally appeared. We have to compensate for the difference in Help+Manual, which we do with version 8.4.2. This behavior is on by default, but can be deactivated with an option switch in the Editor tab of the Program Options dialog.
  Note that the sizing issue affects old-style .wmf files only. The more modern enhanced metafiles (.emf) are not concerned.
• Table of Contents: when copying items within the TOC, topics were always automatically created or duplicated, respectively. There is a new paste option in the drop-down menu of the Paste button, to paste TOC entries only, without duplicating topics.
• EWriter eBooks: the default width and height of the viewer window (like 800 x 600 px) depended on the resolution of the monitor where H&M was being run. It is now treated independent from that resolution.
  Furthermore we fixed a very rare problem that could have sometimes cause the eWriter export to fail.
• Image toggles in HTML export: the magnifier SVG symbol shown on image toggles was slightly clipped on the top and left side.
• Project Language: “Norwegian Nynorsk” was listed twice in the language list (two times NO-NO instead of NO plus NO-NO)
• Publishing Tasks: optical glitch fixed – the last task entry was hidden by the horizontal scrollbar if the main window was too narrow.
• Hard page breaks with a change of print orientation at the beginning of a topic caused a parasite blank paragraph in HTML export.
• Word/DOCX export: bugfix with Word styles
• Batch publishing: if there is no license at all (demo version) the batch export warns about no license and exits with ExitCode 99.

Download

Help+Manual 8.4.2 is available from our download page:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html

We are glad to announce the release of Help+Manual 8.4. If you are using version 8 already and your maintenance plan includes updates until August 9, 2021, just download the setup and run it to update your current installation.

Changes and Additions in v8.4

DeepL Translation Plugin

This update comes with a revised version of the DeepL Translation Plugin. DeepL has recently started to offer free API keys, that you can use to auto-translate a certain amount of text per month (the free contingent is a generous 500.000 characters). The  free API keys, however, require a different API address and Help+Manual 8.4 now works with both, the paid and the free translation API. Read the rest of this entry »