Copyright: Bernd Herd and Harald Nuding (c) 1996


Introduction
Help [image] to RTF

Converts WinHelp Files to Rich Text Format

© 1996 by Bernd Herd and H.Nuding

Introduction

WinHelp is part of the Microsoft Windows operating system mainly used to display help text informations. It was introduced with Windows 3.0 and largely enhanced with Windows 3.1. The new operating systems Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 95 come along with a new 32 Bit help engine called WinHelp 4.0. Many tools applicable to Windows 3.1 help files are now incompatible to the new help files created by Microsofts HCRTF.EXE. Help to RTF is one of the first tools that can handle the new file format.

Because any Windows installed includes WinHelp it has become very common to distribute many informations like your computer vendors prices, the text of the Human Rights or your last edition of the Algoritmo journal this way.

A special version of WinHelp has been enhanced as "Media Viewer". Media Viewer does not use files of type "HLP" but files of type "MVB" which are now also supported by Help to RTF in a limited way. Another toolkit supplied by Microsoft is "Media View", which is based on the same Technology, yet the file format is different. Media View files are usually named ".M13" by the Media View compiler, but sometimes they are renamed to .MVB. These Files are also supported by Help to RTF. Media Viewer files have been tested to provide version 2.0 support, Media View files with version 1.3.

Shareware Licensing Information

Help to RTF is not and has never been free software. You're allowed to evaluate it for a limited period of 30 days, afterwards you have to Register or delete it.

The Software may be distributed freeely as long as the original distribution archiv is not changed, meaning that all components have to be included and nothing may be added or altered.

Printing Help Files

The powerfull WinHelp engine does not allow you to print a whole Help File. It allows to print them on a page by page basis, but this does not even allow you to be shure everything is there, and when everything is done, you do net have any page numbers... Indexes and Table of Contents are missing and there are no Informations where to find a "Jump" because there are no page-References.

When distributing shareware-programs like we do, this is especially nasty. Most commercial programs include a printed handbook, but shareware evaluation copy can't. So we developed Help to RTF to statisfy our users needs.

But also commercial Programs more and more often are sold without a printed handbook.

Recompiling Help projects

There are so many informations available as help files that you might want to combine them into a larger database or to add support for further development tools. You might want to Recompile a help file with support for fulltext retrieval like applicable with the new 32-Bit WinHelp or Media Viewer.

In opposition to the HTML-Standard used in the World Wide Web this can't be done with WinHelp files, because the file format is not prepared to be editable and Microsoft does not deliver technical informations on it.

Help to RTF allows you to generate a recompilable help project including all the text, formatting, jumps, graphics, keywords, secondary windows etc.

Because the RTF-file format is a documented file format it may also be used for various purposes like converting the informations to HTML pages using rtftohtml..

Usage

Usage of Help to RTF is straightforward:

To create a printable RTF-File:

•	Start HLP2RTF.EXE or HLPRTF32.EXE.

•	Click the "Continue" button.

•	Select your help file. If you dont know, where to search, use the "Scan" button.

•	Click the "Continue" button.

•	Selection option "Prepare for printing".

•	Click the "Continue" button until the conversion progress starts.

•	After completion of the conversion progress, click the "Display button.

To create a re-compilable RTF/HPJ/BMP/WMF/SHG... Project:

•	Create an empty directory (With windows File Manager or the DOS command "MD D:\DIRNAME"

•	Copy the help file you want to be converted into this new directory.

•	Start HLP2RTF.EXE or HLPRTF32.EXE.

•	Select your help file

•	Selection option "Prepare for re-compilation".

•	Click the "Continue" button until the conversion progress starts.

Additional Informations on Recompilation

Additional Informations on Printing

Other Products from our Team

Printing embedded Windows

Revision History


Shareware Licensing Information
 Shareware License Information

Restriction Info

Help to RTF is not and has never been free Software. You're allowed to evaluate it for a limited period of 30 Days, afterwards you have to register or delete it.

The software may freeely be distributed as long as the original distribution archiv is not changed, meaning that all components have to be included and nothing may be added or altered.

Differences between Shareware Version and Registered Edition

After registering Help to RTF we will send you the newest version of Help to RTF by diskette or by EMail with an registraion key. The Registration key removes the demo-limitations from Help to RTF:

•	The licensed version does not omit any keyword entries.

•	It does not include the registration reminders in the RTF-File.

The registered edtion may be used on one computer per license only. It is not redistributable.

You may use the registration key for future Version 2-Distributions (V2.xx) of Help to RTF.

Guarantee

Help to RTF uses file access technologies not documented by Microsoft. So we can not guarantee it will be able to convert every file you might think of.

We believe that you have a quite good evaluation platform with the shareware edition. If you find any files incompatible to Help to RTF, please send the file to us. We'll enhance Help to RTF to supply the functions needed.

License Prices

Price	License Type

50 DEM / 40 US $	Single User License to be used on one single machine per license. You may use Compuserves SWREG technology for your order.

100 DEM	Site license to be used on any number of machines belonging to one domain in a Network.

300 DEM / 200 US $	Redistributable license that you may distribute together with your application (like you may know it from DLLs included with your compiler). Ask for more informations.

Special Licenses

If you are interested in special licenses or operating systems not included into above list, like DLL-Support or source codes ask for special support.

Contacting the Developers

Send your questions or order to:

Ingenieurbüro

Bernd Herd

Harald Nuding

Niederstraße 36

64285 Darmstadt

Tel.: 0049-6151/664717

Fax.: 0049-6151/664740

MailBox: 0049-6151/664741	Max. 14.400 Baud, 8 Bit, No Parity

EMail-Adressen:

InterNet: HerdNuding@aol.com

CompuServe: 100545,3001

AOL: HerdNuding

FIDO-Netzadresse: 2:2464/420.10.

Word wide Web: http://members.aol.com/herdnuding/html/index.htm

Other Products from our Team


 Additional Informations on Recompilation

Help to RTF is able to create a completely recompilable HPJ project from a given HLP file. But this will not be identcal to the source code used to create the HLP file when using HCRTF or HC31 to compile it.

Some Informations are simply not stored inside the file, so no program could ever be able to retrieve them

Especaially the Topic-IDs used with the "#"-Footnote entrys and jumps in the file are not included in it, as they are stored as "Hash-Codes". Hash-Codes are 32-Bit values representing a longer string, but the conversion is not unique.

If the Topic-ID has been used in a SHG-File (Segmented Hyper Graphic) it is included with it and Help to RTF will use this ID for all references.

Otherwise Help to RTF will try to "guess" a string that has the same Hash-Code, but may look quite different. After recompiling the file with HC31.EXE or HCRTF.EXE the resulting Jump will be identical, even when there is an inter-file jump from another help file.

Help to RTF will split large HLP files into several RTF files because else it would be impossible to load them into a standard wordprocessor application.

Note that help files are usually protected by copyright laws and that we are in no case responsible for illegal operations you perform with material owned by others.

Additional Informations on Printing


 Additional Informations on Printing

Help to RTF itself is not able to print your help file. Instead it will convert the help files contents into a Richt Text Format file that can be imported into most word processing systems. You need a RTF capable wordprocessor to print the resulting RTF files.

When Help to RTF prepares RTF files for printing it will not include all available informations from the RTF-File.

•	Footnotes are omitted, jumps are not marked, invisible text will not be created.

•	Bitmaps will be included into the RTF file as long as this is possible.

•	Every RTF file will contain a headline statement to show page numbering in the print. Note that Help-Files splitted into several RTF files will result in page numbers on a file by file base, so the page numbers will not be unique.

Help to RTF can only include some bitmaps or informations displayed with embedded windows DLLs (ewl...) into the RTF file.

The creation of page references and indices requires Microsoft Word as textprocessor for the printout. Help to RTF gerenerates control informations like "PageRef" and "Index-Fields that have to be processed by the wordprocessor.

To force work to update these fields Help to RTF links the RTF-Document with HLP2RTF.DOT, which contains an "autoopen" macro. The update of the fields is a bit time-consuming, so it could be a god idea to select another DOT-File after opening the RTF-Document the first time.

Printing embedded Windows

Additional Informations on Recompilation


Operating System Dependence
 Operating-System Dependency

The Shareware-Edition of Help to RTF does include two versions:

Filename	Meaning

HLP2RTF.EXE	Windows 3.1 16-Bit Edition. This version is useable on Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgropus, Windows 3.11, Windows NT and Windows 95.

It is especially well optimized in file size, however internal 16-Bit-addressing is setting limits in the size of the Convertable Help file due to sizes of Keyword-Tables, Topic-ID tables etc. These tables are scanned only when creating recompilable output. For printable output there is only a limit in the number of bitmaps and fonts, but these usually to not result in any Problems.

Only the 16-Bit Version supports printing of embedded windows.

There are no limits in bitmap sizes.

If you try to convert a file too huge for HLP2RTF.EXE it will inform you to use the WIN32 edition.

HLPRTF32.EXE	Windows 32-Bit edition. This edition uses 32-Bit addressing technology to handle huge help files. Therefore it requires a 32-Bit capable Windows installation with Windows 3.1 + WIN32s, Windows NT or Windows 95.

The shareware edition does not convert all the keyword entries from the help file into the RTF files. This is the only limitation to the shareware version.

This restriction does not apply to the registered Version.

Other operating Systems

You currently need to have a Microsoft operating system on your computer to use Help to RTF. We also have a DOS version of Help to RTF, but it is limited to small help files. If you're interested in other operating Systems please contact us for support.


 Embedded Windows DLL Support

Windows Help allows an Author to use additional Technologies supported by DLLs to enhance the Power of the help Enginge.

There are two Technologies: Registered Routines and Embedded Windows.

An Embedded Window is created by the Help author with an { ewc}, { ewl } or { ewr} statement, and normally the only thing visible in the converted RTF-File is this statement.

In many cases the Embedded Window is used to show a Graphic, like a graphic in high color resolution. For example we're offering the JPANI embedded windows DLL that is able to display photos coded as JPEG-Files and animations inside of WinHelp.

Help files created using those technologies require the embedded windows DLL to be available when using WINHELP.EXE to display the file.

When activating the embedded windows DLL support, Help to RTF will try to run the DLL and get the Picture out of it. Viewed from the DLLs view Help to RTF will do as if it would be WINHELP.EXE, it will load the DLL, open the embedded Window and use the printing support technology of the EW-Interface to retrieve the Picture. Afterwards it will release the DLL again.

Note that there are several things to consider about using DLL Support:

•	The DLL must be available either on the path or in the directory containing the help file.

•	Because most embedded windows DLLs currently available are 16-Bit DLLs, currently only the 16-Bit Version of Help to RTF does support this feature. Ask for support if you need to run it with a 32-Bit DLL.

•	The DLL must not be in use by Windows Help. Close Windows Help or under Windows NT start HLP2RTF.EXE in a separate Memory environment.

•	The whole technology is very tricky. We've tested it to be compatible with our DLLs called LZANI.DLL, JPANI.DLL and GRHLP.DLL.

Other DLLs might work or they might even crash your System so you have to reboot.

Embedded windows DLLs that cannot print their contents from Windows Help are likely not to give any results with Help to RTF. Olson softwares oshtools.dll is tested to create only white pages for that reason.


Revision Histroy
 Revision History

Please read from back to start.

27.3.1996 Version 2.04

V2.03 was unuseable on non-german machines.

Fixed a Problem when transfering TrueColor Bitmaps from the HLP-File into the RTF-File, sometimes the Bitmap was unreadable for Ms. Word.

22.3.1996 Version 2.03

Fixed problems with metric sizes of some Graphics.

Fixed incompatibliity of 32-Bit Version with Win32s.

20.3.1996 Version 2.02

Now supports the "Contents="-Enty in HPJ-Project File.

Fixed a bug in the Creation of Hash-Codes for recompilation.

18.3.1996 Version 2.01

New Registration-Key feature.

12.3.1996 Version 2.00

•	Completely revised user interface.

•	Creation of an Indexe.

•	Creation of a Table of Contents.

•	Creates page-References for Jumps and Popups

•	Batch-Mode

•	Scan-Function to search entire drive.

•	Usage of help file title for the page heading.

•	Extracts icon files when creating an HPJ-Project.

•	Fixed some incompatibilities.

18.2.1996 Version 1.14

Fixed an Incompatibility to some Bitmaps found in WinHelp 4.0 (Windows 95) Help-Files. Fixed a Bug in a Windows 95-Specific Decompression Routine that only occured in the 16-Bit Version. Fixed an Incompatibility to Windows 95-Files that used Phrase Compression Compression Scheme.

15.2.1996 Version 1.13

Added support for the hardly ever used {bmxwd ...} Statements. Help-Files that used these Statements usually caused a GPF.

Added Support for Bitmaps in Windows 3.0 Help-Files.

Splitting of RTF-Files into several small RTF-Files is now optional, so you can now create one bir RTF-File which is more comfortable as long as its not too big for your WordProcessor.

Paragraph height Information changed to minimum instead of exact when converting for print, because some Graphics couldnt be displayed because of very low Paragraphs.

31.1.1996 Version 1.12

With new new Powerfull EWx DLL Support you can now try to include Pictures stored as Embedded Windows in the HLP-File.

28.1.1996 Version 1.11

Fixed a Bug in Help to RTF that sometimes caused a GPF or Deivision by Zero-Error when converting Help-Files from HCRTF for Printing. It was caused due to bitmaps that had a metric Size of zero.

Default Paper Size has been set to A4 for Germany. Some special Combination of Compression Technologys found in one Help-files is now supported. Macro Jumps are no longer striked when converting for Print.

27.1.1996 Version 1.10

When creating Files for printing, Bitmaps and WMF-Files are now placed in the Temporary Directory and deleted after Conversion. So when converting for Printing the onlything left when finished are the RTF-Files.

22.1.1996 Version 1.09

Sizes of pitcures are now correct when converting for Printing with Pictures inside of the RTF.

21.1.1996 Version 1.08

Restored Capability to Handle Files from HC30, that has been lost when Adding Multimedia Viewer Support. Also corrected Handling of Keyword Strings and End-Of-File mark for HC30. There are still some Informations not retrieved  from a HC30-File, for example the [MAP]-Entries, but we think these Files to be of little Interest.

20.1.1996 Version 1.07

Progress Dialog can now be Iconized and closed via System Menu. Errornoes Headline-Statements corrected. A Beep now shows when the Conversion is complete. Border-Statements in rtf are now created in a Winword Version 6 compatble way. Options from File selection Dialog are now stored in HLP2RTF.INI. Progress Indicator now dos not stop before 100 %.

16.1.1996 Version 1.05

First hybrid German/English release.

10.1.1996 Version 1.04

You can now force HLP2RTF to create page breaks after every topic when generating RTF files for printing. Tables not neccessary to create printable output only are not scanned anymore, so the 16-Bit version is now able to handle any help file as long as it is formatted for print only.

9.1.1996 Version 1.03

Added support for MVB-Files for Media Viewer 2.0 and MediaView Library 1.3.

7.1.1996 Version 1.02

Added support for Graphic-Compression Types 0x0006,0x0306 and 0x0008 that could not be transformed to BMP or WMF-Files by earlier Versions.

HLP2RTF has been optimized for file-Size now.

5.1.1996 Version 1.01

Found a Bug in Handling of WinHelp 4.0 Files, so some Files, for Example HCW.HLP leaded to a hanging Program displaying "Extracting Baggage".

3.1.1996 Version 1.00

Initial redistributable Release. First Version with WinHelp 4.0 Support.

Before

Several distributions of Beta-Versions to selected Clients. Distributed 16-Bit Version with FIDO-Net WINDOWS.PROG.GER.


 Registering via CompuServe SWREG

Instead of normal ordering of your license with a fax or EMail, CompuServe users can also use SWREG to order and buy Help to RTF. No additional charges will be needed. CompuServe will get the money from you with your normal CompuServe bill.

To order via SWREG, you will "GO SWREG" in CompuServe and follow the instructions there.

Help to RTF has SWREG ID code 9235

Commercial clients outside of germany but inside the european union should send us their european vat number.


Other Products from B.Herd and H.Nuding

You may want to take a look onto other shareware distributed programs available from our team:

Compuserve FileName	Compuserve Forum	Description	Price	Document-Language
LZAPI.ZIP	WINSDK	Your Doorway to the Archive: A set of redistributable DLLs giving your applications access to compressed archives in formats ZIP,ARC,LZH,ARJ,RAR,ZOO and TAR Available for 16-Bit and 32-Bit Windows development	99 US $	English
JPGANI.ZIP	WINSDK	LZH- and JPEG compressed pictures in WinHelp (.HLP) and Media Viewer (.MVB) files. Allows for photographic-like use of WinHelp multimedia Applications.	20 US $	English
ASETUP.LZH	GERWIN	Multilungual german /english/french installation program with C-source, fast LZH decompressor, self-installing EXE capability, easy to use	Public Domain	English + German
HEXE.LZH	GERWIN	German edition of the ASetup Drag & Drop Workshop	200 DM	German
WITCH.LZH	WINSDK	English edition of the ASetup Drag & Drop Workshop	150 US $	English
HLP2RTF.ZIP	PCPROG	Help file to RTF converter - Allows to Converrt a help file or Media Veiwer file into a recompilable HPJ project - or to Convert it for printing including all the bitmaps	40 US $	English
NEUBOX.LZH	GERWIN	Custom Controls for database applications.  - Column listbox with user editable fields, sizeable headings, sort etc., fast filling up to 32000 lines - columned ComboBox  - Edit control with overwrite mode and many many more...	499 DM	German
GRBTN.LZH	GERWIN	Custom Controls to design dialog boxes - Easy to use Tabbed Dialogs. Allows to use Tabbed Dialogs changing only the resources without changing the source codes of your program. - Easy to use picture buttons - Statusbar automization for dialog boxes and many many more...	150 DM	German
DAVINCI.LZH	GERWIN	Graphic Import/Export library. Imports graphics as device independend bitmaps and metafiles: - Import: BMP/WMF/TIF/JPG/PCX/DXF/GIF - Export BMP/WMF/TIF/JPG - Transparently allows to use Aldus / Microsoft import filter programs (.FLT) - Includes powerfull set of graphic support gunctions like dithering, rotating...	150 DM	German
LHALIB14.ZIP	WINSDK	3,5 KByte LHA decompression DLL for setup applications with assembly language source	Public Domain	English

You might also like to visit our WWW-Pages at

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/herd_nuding

Most tools listet above can be downloaded from these pages.