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Yeah i really appreciated the chm format too. They killed it or is it still alive? Mac OS guides are also a very good editorial/digital work. (but no videos?).

Yeah i really appreciated the chm format too. They killed it or is it still alive? Mac OS guides are also a very good editorial/digital work. (but no videos?). The guides on MacOS look very simple and clean. I appreciate when the software I buy has a guide like that (pixelmator) and not just a link to a website (sketch). I know the required effort so I value them a lot.

nolok 7y ago
It still works just fine but the tools haven’t been updated for a while, almost no modern software supports exporting to it and it’s not “cool” anymore. So now we use often inferior stuff instead, or merely get a link to some online documentation, until someone “reinvents” it five years from now probably using some kind of electron variant making it cool again.
- Crinus 7y ago
  Hm, almost every desktop program i have on Windows that bothers with help uses CHM and pretty much every documentation generator can generate CHM files, why do you think it isn't used?
  - ryacko 7y ago
    Everyone Googles for the problem or uses some monolithic tool. Even notepad’s documentation has gotten worse over the years. In Windows 8.1, notepad doesn’t even mention the “.LOG” automatic date/time add feature.
  - nolok 7y ago
    Try to find node, go, vscode etc ... documentation in chm. They have third parties versions sure, but not official. And for those that still uses it, it’s rarely up to date.
    - Crinus 7y ago
      Of those only VSCode is a desktop application and VSCode is already a web browser. Also considering it is meant to be modular, its documentation system would also need to be modular and i'm not sure if CHM is good with that.
- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  For many modern languages, the language ecosystem often comes with a tool to generate docs that also work offline.
mavhc 7y ago
It had massive security problems, so they mostly killed it. eg https://blog.checkpoint.com/2015/05/12/the-microsoft-help-file-chm-may-enslave-you/ https://blog.checkpoint.com/2015/05/12/the-microsoft-help-fi...

nolok 7y ago

It still works just fine but the tools haven’t been updated for a while, almost no modern software supports exporting to it and it’s not “cool” anymore. So now we use often inferior stuff instead, or merely get a link to some online documentation, until someone “reinvents” it five years from now probably using some kind of electron variant making it cool again.

Crinus 7y ago
Hm, almost every desktop program i have on Windows that bothers with help uses CHM and pretty much every documentation generator can generate CHM files, why do you think it isn't used?
- ryacko 7y ago
  Everyone Googles for the problem or uses some monolithic tool. Even notepad’s documentation has gotten worse over the years. In Windows 8.1, notepad doesn’t even mention the “.LOG” automatic date/time add feature.
- nolok 7y ago
  Try to find node, go, vscode etc ... documentation in chm. They have third parties versions sure, but not official. And for those that still uses it, it’s rarely up to date.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    Of those only VSCode is a desktop application and VSCode is already a web browser. Also considering it is meant to be modular, its documentation system would also need to be modular and i'm not sure if CHM is good with that.
AsyncAwait 7y ago
For many modern languages, the language ecosystem often comes with a tool to generate docs that also work offline.

mavhc 7y ago

It had massive security problems, so they mostly killed it. eg https://blog.checkpoint.com/2015/05/12/the-microsoft-help-file-chm-may-enslave-you/ https://blog.checkpoint.com/2015/05/12/the-microsoft-help-fi...