Creating CHM files with Writer

[GlobeTrot]

We're in the process of writing our product manuals in OOO Writer, but now need to convert them to CHM format as well.

Is there any built-in way to convert from ODT to CHM format? Or any plugin/tool etc.?

I searched on this forum, but the only thing I could find was this 2 year old post: http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=25137. But this one talks about saving to PDF instead of converting to a CHM file.

Thanks in advance!

[kerashi]

There is no built-in way to do this. There are also very few, if any, open source programs to help you here, so here's what I found with google.

If you absolutely must use a CHM file, you'll might want to use Microsoft's tool. The MSDN Windows Help page is below.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb267846.aspx

There's also various other tools that you can use besides Microsoft's. Wikipedia has an article that might be of interest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_authoring_tool

There's quite a list of help authoring tools there.

It's probably important to note that MS has stopped development on the CHM format. It might be worth your while to check out Sandcastle to provide documentation in Windows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandcastle_(software)

It's a set of command line tools, with a basic GUI. If you want a better GUI might wanna try Sandcastle Help File Builder

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=SHFB

Hope this helps.

[GlobeTrot]

Many thanks for the detailed reply!

We don't have a compulsion to use CHM, anything similar is fine (the requirement is to trigger it from a web page, and then it must allow chapters, searching, index etc.).

So if there's something else instead which allows users to open up a web browser window similar to CHM - that would work as well!

Regards