Developer(s) | Divcom Software |
---|---|
Stable release | 10.1 [1] / November 19, 2024 |
Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
Available in | English |
Type | IDE |
License | Trialware |
Website | www |
HelpSmith is a Windows-based help authoring tool published by Divcom Software. [2]
HelpSmith allows a technical writer to create documentation in various formats, such as HTML Help (CHM), Web Help (HTML-based help system), PDF, ePub, and Markdown. Also HelpSmith includes screen capture and image annotation tools.
Version 1.0 of HelpSmith was released in 2007 as a help authoring tool that had support for a single HTML Help (CHM) format. On February 7, 2008, HelpSmith was presented on the Giveaway of the Day website where the product received initial feedback and feature requests from its users. [3]
Over the past few years, HelpSmith has obtained support for the major documentation formats, support for High DPI displays, improvements to the user interface, and other enhancements. [4]
Similarly to common help authoring tools, HelpSmith includes a word processor to edit the content of help topics, customizable templates, user-defined variables, the ability to import existing documentation, media files management tools, support for various output formats, [5] conditional compilation capabilities, and other functions.
The integrated Image Tool can be used by a technical writer to capture screenshots of an application or website, and to add annotations for elements demonstrated on a screenshot. The Image Tool also has support for control annotations which can be used for creation of user interface documentation. [6] [7]
HelpSmith is available as a free trial version that can be downloaded for evaluation purposes from the official website. A single-user (per seat) license allows a customer to install HelpSmith Standard or HelpSmith Professional Edition on the main computer, and on a second computer, such as laptop. A multiple-user (floating) license allows a customer to install HelpSmith Terminal Server Edition on a terminal server in the client/server environment for concurrent usage by multiple users. [13]
LZX is an LZ77 family compression algorithm, a slightly improved version of DEFLATE. It is also the name of a file archiver with the same name. Both were invented by Jonathan Forbes and Tomi Poutanen in the 1990s.
Technical writing is a specialized form of communication used by many of today's industrial and scientific organizations to clearly and accurately convey complex information to a user. An organization's customers, employees, assembly workers, engineers, and scientists are some of the most common users who reference this form of content to complete a task or research a subject. Most technical writing relies on simplified grammar, supported by easy-to-understand visual communication to clearly and accurately explain complex information.
A Help Authoring Tool or HAT is a software program used by technical writers to create online help systems.
Microsoft Compiled HTML Help is a Microsoft proprietary online help format, consisting of a collection of HTML pages, an index and other navigation tools. The files are compressed and deployed in a binary format with the extension .CHM, for Compiled HTML. The format is often used for software documentation.
Microsoft WinHelp is a proprietary format for online help files that can be displayed by the Microsoft Help browser winhelp.exe or winhlp32.exe. The file format is based on Rich Text Format (RTF). It remained a popular Help platform from Windows 3.0 through Windows XP. WinHelp was removed in Windows Vista purportedly to discourage software developers from using the obsolete format and encourage use of newer help formats. Support for WinHelp files would eventually be removed entirely in Windows 10.
ArcGIS is a family of client, server and online geographic information system (GIS) software developed and maintained by Esri.
Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi
e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems.
Sandcastle is a documentation generator from Microsoft. It automatically produces MSDN-style code documentation out of reflection information of .NET assemblies and XML documentation comments found in the source code of these assemblies. It can also be used to produce user documentation from Microsoft Assistance Markup Language (MAML) with the same look and feel as reference documentation.
The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.
Microsoft Help 2.x is a proprietary format for online help files, developed by Microsoft and first released in 2001 as a help system for Visual Studio .NET (2002) and MSDN Library.
InetSoft Technology Corporation is a privately owned multinational computer software company that develops free and commercial web-based business intelligence applications. The company was founded in 1996, and currently has over 120 employees between its corporate headquarters in Piscataway, New Jersey, and development offices in Beijing and Xi'an, China.
VSdocman is a documentation generator that allows for code commenting and the automatic generation of technical documentation from C# and VB .NET projects. It is directly integrated in Visual Studio as an extension.
Okular is a multiplatform document viewer developed by the KDE community and based on Qt and KDE Frameworks libraries. It is distributed as part of the KDE Applications bundle. Its origins are from KPDF and it replaces KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, KFaxview and KDVI in KDE 4. Its functionality can be embedded in other applications.
A.nnotate is a web service for storing and annotating documents. Documents are either uploaded by the user or fetched from a web address supplied by the user. Uploads are accepted as PDF, Microsoft Word, office formats supported by OpenOffice and common image formats. When a URL of a web page is entered, the service makes a local copy of the HTML and stylesheet. The service offers a browser bookmarklet to facilitate making snapshots of web pages.
HelpNDoc is a Windows-based help authoring tool published by French company IBE Software.
STDU Viewer is computer software, a compact viewer for many computer file formats: Portable Document Format (PDF), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), DjVu, comic book archive, FB2, ePUB, XML Paper Specification (XPS), Text Compression for Reader (TCR), Mobipocket (MOBI), AZW, multi-page TIFF, text file (TXT), PalmDoc (PDB), Windows Metafile (EMF), Windows Metafile (WMF), bitmap (BMP), Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), JPEG-JPG, Portable Network Graphics (PNG), Photoshop Document (PSD), PiCture eXchange (PCX-DCX). It works under Microsoft Windows, and is free for non-commercial use.
List & Label is a professional reporting tool for software developers. It provides comprehensive design, print and export functions. The software component runs on Microsoft Windows and can be implemented in desktop, cloud and web applications. List & Label can be used to create user-defined dashboards, lists, invoices, forms and labels. It supports many development environments, frameworks and programming languages such as Microsoft Visual Studio, Embarcadero RAD Studio, .NET Framework, .NET Core, ASP.NET, C++, Delphi, Java, C Sharp and some more. List & Label either retrieves data from various sources via data binding, or works database independent. Reports are designed and created in the so-called List & Label Designer and then exported into a multitude of formats like PDF, Excel, XHTML and RTF. Since version 27 a web report designer for ASP.NET MVC is available.
Zight previously known as CloudApp is a cross-platform screen capture and screen recording desktop client that supports online storage and sharing.
dbForge is a database management product line started in 2005. It focuses on database development, design, management, and administration for SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, PostgreSQL database management systems, and a number of cloud services, data storage platforms, and search engines. dbForge services include separate tools for code completion, database documentation, database data and schema comparison, and tool bundles for specific databases. Additionally, dbForge products provide add-ins for Microsoft SSMS and Visual Studio.