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August 25, 2008 release (1.3.1): Skip certain bad nodes in the TOC (@NoTitle, null target, etc.)

What It Does

Package This is a GUI tool written in C# for creating help files (.chm and .hxs) from the content obtained from the MSDN Library or the TechNet Library via the MSDN Content Service. You select the content you want from the table of contents, build a help file, and use the content offline. You are making personalized ebooks of MSDN or TechNet content. Both help file formats also give full text search and keyword search.

The code illustrates how to use the MSDN Content Service to retrieve documentation from MSDN or TechNet. It also shows how to build .hxs files and .chm files programmatically.

Prerequisites

Package This requires .NET 2.0, the .hxs SDK (MSHelp 2.0), part of the Visual Studio 2005 SDK, and the .chm SDK (HTML Help). If you just want to create .chm files, you don't need to download the .hxs components (and vice versa).

Limitations

There is a bug in HTML Help that will cause the index tab to show incorrect character encodings depending on your default locale. For example, you'll see this problem if you build a Japanese .chm file on a machine with the default locale set to English. If you change the default locale to Japanese (which requires a reboot) and rebuild the .chm file, it won't show this problem (even on an English machine).

To view .hxs files, you'll need an .hxs viewer.

Content Service Logging

Package This sends a string ("PackageThisGui") to the server to identify its requests in the web server logs. The idea is to determine whether anyone is actually using the tool.
Last edited Aug 25 at 10:48 PM  by erikla, version 11
Comments
KeithPRC wrote  May 1 2007 at 12:49 AM  
Why not integrate with OneNote 2007 ?

Sai wrote  May 3 2007 at 5:42 AM  
Doesnt work with proxy. Needs to show a login prompt for proxy users to use this app. Currently the application just throws an unhandled exception and quits.

tarunupadhyaya wrote  May 4 2007 at 4:07 AM  
Few Suggestions
1. Generate the HTML/HXS help project in the folder selected by the user rather in ..\Local Settings\Temp\blah blah
2. If through some way we can mark a content as new or recently added

wyattwong wrote  May 9 2007 at 4:28 PM  
I noticed when a # symbol exists in the .chm filename, when the .chm file is opened, many pages will be empty, is it a problem or a limitation (because the .chm tag made use of the # symbol ?)

mescwb wrote  May 25 2007 at 6:29 PM  
It´s not obvious you must right-click topic checkbox to download and pack all child nodes together. I initially spent a lot of time opening and marking items individually! until I got bothered and blindly tried some ad-hoc clicking

mescwb wrote  May 25 2007 at 6:32 PM  
If you left window open and start a big download, the "Downloading content" dialog "freezes" PackageThis window. It might be a decoupled window uh? So we could start a download AND also continue to play with topics' tree

mescwb wrote  May 25 2007 at 6:33 PM  
just a joke - why don't msdn let the root topics available by a normal download, zipped/cab file :-)) including the examples' pictures

mescwb wrote  Jul 1 2007 at 1:21 AM  
wonderful if download could be multi-threaded, at least one thread by 1st-level sub-topic. Wideband could be used in its most and download times enshort :-)

mescwb wrote  Jul 4 2007 at 10:36 PM  
what about let we choose a sound file to play when selected downloads finish? it may call our attention when download left unattended :-)

amitbhandari wrote  Jul 7 2007 at 7:43 AM  
Just great piece of utility. Well, the download can be accelerated by dividing the content to be downloaded into various parts to optimize the bandwidth usage.

cicorias wrote  Aug 16 2007 at 2:53 PM  
Great tool. Agree with the UI threading suggestions, but heck, this tool does the work. As for integration with One Note, I would thinking XPS first then PDF, although the HTML to other format conversion is quite a bit more and not sure how the links would survive w/ out a tremendous amount of coding or some 3rd party types.

wyattwong wrote  Dec 5 2007 at 2:19 PM  
The Package This tool does not checked whether there is already a MSDN or TechNet library installed. If the tool is run on a PC without MSDN or TechNet library installed, an exception will be generated.

wyattwong wrote  Dec 6 2007 at 12:53 AM  
The Package This tool should provide an icon in the executable file.

hfrmobile wrote  Dec 6 2007 at 10:44 AM  
Nice idea! For a 1.0.0.0 it's ok (will give it a try) - currently testing

Version info: "Copyright © Microsoft 2006" (not 2007)?

AlexL wrote  Jan 18 at 3:23 PM  
What about access to "Windows Server TechCenter" (technet2.microsoft.com) content? Does MTPS supports it?

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Current release:
Version 1.3.1 Skip bad nodes
Mon Aug 25 2008 at 7:00 AM
56 downloads


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