Help + Manual

What is Help + Manual?

The Help + Manual is a documentation tool and a content management system for editing one or more authors.

All publishing formats supported by the Help + Manual are generated from the same project. This means that your documentation needs to be edited only once. Forget the nightmare of "converting" your documentation every time there are changes.

However, Single Source is much more than just a view of the same information in different formats. The Help + Manual supports conditional and customized output features that allow the inclusion of variant content versions for different output formats and purposes - all in the same project, no post-processing is required.

Multichannel publishing

The Help + Manual publishes all standard Windows help formats, from HTML Help to Web Help to Visual Studio Help. It also generates Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word documents and e-books from ePUB - the default format supported by Apple's iPad - as well as the Amazon Kindle.

Windows Help Formats

Windows HTML (.chm) is the platform-specific format for all Windows applications, including .NET. The Help + Manual creates CHM files as well as MSHC, a special integration help format in Microsoft VisualStudio.

Web help responsive and context-sensitive

The Webhelp publishing format includes a summary, keyword index, and search.  Webhelp is context-sensitive and allows seamless integration into your site. This output format can be highly customized and supports jQuery plugins for non-static content animations.

Adobe PDF

The PDF output and print manuals are fully customizable with the included Print Manual Designer program: the program has an index of keywords, automatic page references for links and cross-references, custom page layouts, headers, footers, page numbering, covers, introductions, and more.

Microsoft Word

A classic: Word documents. Use a normal Word file to create the user manual layout, and use placeholder tags that Help + Manual uses to fill content when publishing to Word. An automatically constructed summary, keyword index, and interactive topic links make the Word document suitable for both print and online viewing.

Publishing on iPad

With Apple's iPad, e-books have become mainstream. The Help + Manual publishes ePUB in the standard electronic e-book format. This format is optimized for iPad, iPhone, Nook Reader (this is a dedicated e-book format for offline reading on e-readers).

Amazon Kindle

With Help + Manual, you're able to create Amazon Kindle e-books, ready for distribution.

Organizing content in single-source projects

Single source is more than simply publishing the same content in different output formats. The Help + Manual supports this at many levels of the documentation workflow!

The Help + Manual desktop provides all the formatting and editing capabilities of a modern word processor, including dynamic styles and complex tables. This is combined with powerful features for creating and editing help files and documentation, including full support for multimedia and complex modular projects.

System Requirements

Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows XP/SP3.