I have created a very good help system in VFP (no more RTFs to edit and compile! - you can edit the help while using it) which I will post here as soon as a few things are ironed out.
One of them is, "how do I register an application to open a certain file type" ? I can do it manually through the windows explorer. But if I distribute this application, it should open "*.HELP" files using my applications.
The help info will be in a DBC which I will rename as *.HELP. When you click on any *.HELP file, it should bring up my application with the path and name of the HELP file.
This help resembles MSDN - it is basically a tree structure and it has Index, Contents and Find tabs & a See also link. But the actual help could be in a memo field or an insertable object (could be a BMP, a Word File, etc).
The advantage is that your user can add notes as they use the help, you do not have to worry about #, K or $ footnotes or topic mapping. You can move a whole section from one node to another in one click. Your users can edit the "See Also" too.
thanks
Bharat Sanghvi
Vice President, Information Technology
Deyta
Continuous Quality Measurement Systems