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.

• eWriter: We have included the latest eViewer 5.2 in this update.

• 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.