Help+Manual 10 is here!

There is a new incremental search feature in the TOC. When anything in the TOC is selected, typing a character jumps to the first character in the TOC starting with that character. Typing two characters quickly jumps to the first entry starting with those two characters. Pressing the HOME key jumps back to the top of the TOC.

Double-clicking on the header of the Project Explorer centers the selected entry in the TOC pane.

The Insert Picture dialog has been completely rebuilt with a number of new options. The Insert Image dropdown menu now includes the folders from your project search path so that you can insert images from there directly.

You can now repeat the last find function with F3 (customizable), as long as the Find & Replace dialog remains open. The dialog is not modal, so you can continue editing even when it is open.

Topic editor and project styles support half-point sizes (e.g. 10.5pt).

When you copy text and paragraphs formatted with styles between projects and the styles have the same names but different settings the style of the target project is now used immediately.

View and edit all topics with a set status

The Report Tool can now list all topics by status and you can then edit them directly by clicking on the topic links in the report. This is much more efficient than searching for them manually in the TOC.

Paste as Markdown

A new Paste as Markdown option as been added to the Paste menu. This converts copied Markdown text to Help+Manual XML when you paste it from the clipboard. It assumes that the clipboard actually contains Markdown text, of course.

Syntax Highlighter for Code Examples

New option in the configuration dialog for including line numbers in the formatted result, code preview implemented for easier configuration.

 

Syntax Highlighter

 

The old Impict graphics and screenshot editor included with Help+Manual up until version 9 has been replaced with SnipSVG, our SVG-based screen capture and graphics editor.

SnipSVG is now fully integrated in Help+Manual out of the box and replaces Impict for the Image Editor tool.

Screen Capture Utility

The screen capture Start Window now supports dark mode. A right-click resize function is now available for screenshot captures.

Help+Manual 10 now fully supports the open ZipHelp format. The main purpose of ZipHelp is as an open, compact, single-file and multi-platform documentation format for which anyone can develop a viewer for any platform.

New explicit default build options: the DOCX and EPUB build options have been added for clearer selection of output formats with build options.

When publishing modular projects (master project with merged child projects) you now get warnings in the compiler report if duplicate topic IDs are encountered in any of the published modules.

Publishing Task Manager - two new right-click options added: Duplicate Selected Action/s and Duplicate Entire Task.

Export to WebHelp and eWriter now uses vector-based SVG icons for the table of contents when you select the default TOC icons in the skin.

Standard skins create a structured HTML output with media files and javascript in separate folders.

A new image conversion table in Configuration > Publishing Options > Image Conversion allows for a detailed configuration, which image format is exported how. This new conversion table replaces the older and more limited settings that used to be in HTML Export Options.

Amazon now uses ePub instead of mobi: Amazon no longer supports their old mobi format for eBooks. They have switched to the standard ePub format instead. The Amazon Kindle eBook export option now generates EPUB books configured correctly for Amazon Kindle.

SVG images containing JPEG or PNG bitmaps are now exported as transparent PNG images. This is necessary for two reasons: Most PDF readers display such hybrid SVG images with low quality, and the transparency of PNG images embedded in SVGs is not maintained in PDF.

Print Manual Designer now fully supports alpha transparent PNGs.

Accessible PDFs: the PDF/A output option includes a new setting for accessibility tags (section 508 compliance). This option currently creates a basic document structure. We will improve this feature with the next updates to make the PDF output fully section 508 compliant.

Our separate application Help+Manual Translation Assistant has been updated to version 10 along with Help+Manual.

• Synchronization of repositories implemented.
• High-dpi user interface with SVG icons.
• DeepL Plugin: DeepL Write added.
• ChatGPT plugin added.
• New Status column added (applies to topics and TOC entries). This column is particularly useful to sort the topic list by status.