EC Software has announced its latest update to Help & Manual, one of the most popular Help authoring tools (HATs) among software developers. The latest version can generate Visual Studio source code documentation by importing projects from Microsoft Sandcastle.
Help & Manual 5.4 can run Microsoft Sandcastle to read your Visual Studio source code and comments, builds the documentation structure for your functions and classes, integrating the comments found in the source. Then, instead of compiling the “finished” CHM or HTML files, it transforms the Sandcastle XML data into a Help & Manual XML project, which you can then edit in Help & Manual, alone or in a team, and publish in any of the many supported output formats.
Visit the Help & Manual website for more information. Read the official press release.
Four communication and information sciences Masters students from Radboud University in the Netherlands are researching user experiences with Help authoring tools (specifically: Author-it, Flare, Doc-To-Help, Help & Manual, and RoboHelp).
They have created a survey to gain more insight in user-friendliness of functionality and overall user experiences. With the results, they plan to:
- Write an article.
- Create a matrix showing a clear overview of functionalities and associated user-friendliness score.
- Write a more practical report with recommendations.
It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete the one-page, 60-question survey. If you would like a copy of the results, you can enter your email address. You can also volunteer to participate in a short phone interview regarding the results.
The students are aware that the results are not scientific, but your help is appreciated in giving them solid data that they can analyze.
Take the survey.
If you have any comments or questions, post them here. We will do our best to get the answers.
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