Help+Manual is a documentation tool and content management system for both single and multi-author editing.
All publishing formats supported by Help+Manual are generated from the same project. This means you only have to edit your help and documentation once. Forget about the nightmare of "converting" your documentation every time you change anything.
Help+Manual creates all publishing formats from a single source
However, Single Source is much more than just outputting exactly the same information to different formats. Help+Manual supports conditional and customized output features that enable you to include variant content versions for different output formats and purposes – all in the same project, no post-processing is required.
Multi-Channel Publishing with Help+Manual
Help+Manual publishes all standard Windows help formats, from HTML Help to Webhelp to Visual Studio Help. It also generates Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word documents and ePUB e-books - the standard format supported by the Apple iPad - as well as Amazon Kindle.
Webhelp with website integration
Responsive, context-sensitive Webhelp
The Webhelp publishing format includes a table of contents, keyword index and full-text search. Webhelp is context-sensitive and allows seamless integration into your website. This output format can be highly customized and supports jQuery plugins for animations of non-static content.
Windows help formats
Windows HTML Help (.chm) is the platform-specific format for all Windows applications including .NET. Help+Manual creates CHM files as well as MSHC, a special help format for integration into Microsoft VisualStudio.
Adobe PDF user manual
Adobe PDF
PDF output and print manuals are fully customizable with the bundled Print Manual Designer program: include a table of contents and a keyword index, automatic page referrers for links and cross-references, customized page layouts, headers, footers, page numbering, covers, introductions and more.
Microsoft Word
A classic: Word documents. Use a regular Word file to build the layout of your user manual and use placeholder tags that Help+Manual uses to fill the content of your help project when publishing to Word. An automatically-built table of contents, keyword index and interactive topic links make the Word document suitable for both, printing and online viewing.
ePUB e-book displayed in iBooks
ePUB Publishing
With the Apple iPad, e-books have become mainstream. Help+Manual publishes the standard ePUB e-book format optimized for iPad, iPhone, the Nook Reader and other e-reading devices.
This is a dedicated e-book format for offline reading on e-readers like iPad and iPhone.
Amazon Kindle
Do you want to get your e-book into the Amazon store? Nothing's easier than that! With Help+Manual, you can produce Amazon Kindle e-books, packaged ready for distribution.
Organize content in single-source projects
Single source is more than simply publishing same content to different output formats! You certainly want to customize the output for every publishing platform. Help+Manual supports this on many levels of the documentation work flow:
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Master/Child Modules
Split documentation projects into modules. Help projects can include topics and chapters from other help projects and you can edit them in the same way as local topics. This is great if the product you are documenting is split into modules as well: the documentation design follows the product design!
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Conditional Tags
Chapters that go into the print manual, topics that are included in the online version only. Conditional tags on chapter, topic and text level make this a breeze! Help+Manual has pre-defined tags for every output format and user-defined conditional tags for any purpose you can imagine.
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Multiple TOCs
Where conditional tags cannot do the job anymore: multiple table of contents come to the rescue! This feature makes it really simple to use a completely different content structure for a publishing task. Create an additional TOC to create a review copy of your documentation, or a quick start tutorial with excerpts from the main manual.
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Text Variables
You can use text variables (pre-defined and user-defined variables) in literally every place of your documentation project. Text variables are placeholder objects, that are replaced with their actual content at publishing time. Use them for product names to enable custom branding, or for content that is yet not fixed.
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Snippets and Text Fragments
Snippets can be retrieved from a central repository and are updated automatically when the repository source changes.
Multiple TOCs: great
for different content structures
Master/Child modules
seamlessly merged
Migrate Legacy Content
Import existing content from Microsoft® Word, Adobe® RoboHelp®, Author-It®, HTML and Winhelp with detailed control, how Help+Manual organizes and splits the content.
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Windows HTML Help (.chm) Help+Manual both creates and reads Windows HTML Help (CHM) files. |
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Winhelp Sources (.hpj) Convert the depricated Winhelp format into standards-compliant HTML. |
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Compiled Winhelp (.hlp) HLP file raw import is the last resort, if the Winhelp source files are no longer available. |
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Adobe® RoboHelp® (.xpj) Import content from RoboHelp® projects. |
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Author-It® Author-It® projects can be converted from the Author-It® XML output. |
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Microsoft® Word Help+Manual imports Word documents in RTF format. |
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HTML Files Read HTML5 and older HTML content, import a batch of HTML files from folders. |
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Source Code Documentation Build source code documentation for Visual Studio projects. |
An Intuitive Working Environment
Bookmarks: one of many convenience features
Help+Manual´s working environment gives you all the formatting and editing features of a modern word processor, including dynamic styles and complex tables.
This is combined with powerful features for generating and editing help and documentation files, including full support for multimedia and complex modular projects.
Your projects are displayed and edited with the same hierarchical tree structure used by all Windows help formats. The editor and content tree view are combined in a single window.
Editing topics and manipulating the structure of your projects is fast and intuitive.
Help+Manual handles all the complexities of help formatting and generation for you, letting you concentrate on the work of writing. But there is also extensive support for power users and experienced help authors. You can get under the hood and insert your own HTML code, change the code the program uses to generate your projects, manipulate topic and project templates and more. Help+Manual gives you the best of both worlds.
Working with Help+Manual is so easy and enjoyable
We promise: after experiencing the Help+Manual way of writing documentation, you don't want your old HTML editor back! Never. Try yourself with our 30-day fully-functional evaluation version!