Xarax -- help when you need it

[jon404]

In a literary world awash with vampire novels, it was a pleasure this morning to read over the Xarax.chm help file again. This work is so good, so complete, that you might want to link to it from a desktop shortcut, rather than from the DPX program. So that, now and then, you can read it by itself, and enjoy excellent documentation.


Microsoft's .chm format is still -- for me -- really, really good for onscreen manuals. Better than PDFs, better than .epubs or Kindle .mobis. Onscreen, the .chm lets me scroll each topic to completion, rather than attempting to present the material in virtual paper pages.


Years ago, doing tech writing, I made these. Microsoft gave away a free Help Workshop tool that was easy to use, just excellent. But we ended up switching to PDFs, as converting from the print manual in Framemaker to the .chm took a LOT longer than just outputting the PDF. And, for our products, it was just as easy for a C+ programmer to link a context-sensitive help button to a PDF topic as to a .chm topic.


So today, I'm very impressed that somebody at Xara took the extra time to make the Xarax.chm. To get it right with clear and comprehensive examples. If you haven't looked at it yet, you might want to -- it is very well-written and illustrated, and could be used as a tech writing college course example for best practices. And, if there's anyone from Xara who reads these posts, please give your tech writer my congratulations for producing one of the best user manuals ever. Thanks!

[sunland]

I will second that, Xara's help files have always been superb. In the early days, CorelXara, I read through them entirely at least 2 times. There is a lot hidden in them that does not take too much effort to get at.
sunland