>..about not implementing HTML help in VFP 6! After creating my first HTML help file for one of my apps, I get an error message when I tried to invoke the following:
>
>set help to dfs.chm
>hit the F1 key and boom! error!
>
>_vfp.help('dfs.chm') does not work, and you can't do this with any other CHM file either. Basically the error was The .HLP file is invalid or corrupt. Then I read in Hacker's, among other tidbits, Given that [MS] has decreed that HTML Help is the future, this is a pretty big mistake.
>
>So, now I have to resort to the kludge, run /n hh.exe dfs.chm because you still can only use .HLP files with SET HELP, etc. What a crock.
>
>Arghhhhh!
>
>set rant off

I haven't had that problem. The comment in The Hacker's Guide refers specifically to _VFP.Help, not to SET HELP TO. I have had other problems which I have brought up. They turned out to be partly my own blunders, and partly due to bad installation of HTML Help Workshop on my machine because of a network permission problem (the installation reported no error). I now have fully functional HTML Help that works from F1 or the menu bar, and is context sensitive. I blame M$ at this point mainly for the dearth of documentation about the context-sensitive stuff (also a problem in Access 97). I believe that Whil Hentzen's upcoming book about programming Visual Studio on a Visual FoxPro foundation is supposed to have some discussion of these matters.

Does it fail when you SET HELP TO anythingyouhave.CHM, or just a .CHM created by you? If it's the latter, maybe your HHW.EXE is improperly installed, like mine was. When I would compile a Help file, ForeHelp would trap the error that was occurring without reporting it. However, West Wind HTML Help or HHW itself would report an improperly registered .DLL. In my case, the .CHM worked except for the full-text search, which never found a word.

If you want commiseration from someone who should know, search for Rick Strahl's rant about hard coded paths in HTML Help projects. And don't try to move a project after you've created one.