>The 3 are .DBF style Help, Windows Help, and HTML Help. In reading about it, all 3 appear to be either not available, not stable, or too long a learning curve. I don't have a "staff of technical writers" to handle this so it needs to be fairly straight-forward.

West-Wind's HTML help builder is available for download here from the files section. File 41. It is pretty simple to use and get you going faily fast.