Maintaining text-only topics

Whenever changes are made to the application, there’s a good possibility that you’ll need to update your text-only topics to reflect these changes. (If you’re using What’s This? Help Composer, most of these maintenance issues will also apply.)

Changes in the application affect:

To efficiently maintain your window-level Help, follow these guidelines:

For this type of change:

Do this:

Obsolete features (dialogs, message boxes and windows are removed from the application).

Remove the text-only topics from the text-only files (.TXT).

Updated and improved features (a dialog is changed to include new controls, some fields are removed).

Edit the content of the text-only topics so they accurately explain how to use the features or delete them if fields were removed from dialogs.

New features (for example, new dialogs are added).

Create new text-only topics.

New map files (for new features).

Import the map files into the project BEFORE creating the text-only topics.

Updated map files (for new and/or existing features).

Update the existing map file by removing the obsolete map file and importing the updated one.

 

WARNING!

  • If you’re creating both text-only topics and window-level topics, avoid using the same map file for both.

  • Each time you update your context-sensitive Help, be sure to test all topics that have been changed or added.