Just to second Mike's comments - if you need to read .HLP files on anything
other than Winders, convert them to another format first. HTML is a good choice.
Internally, a .HLP file uses a precursor of the MS Structured Storage stuff
(i.e. there's a filesystem inside there), the text is heavily compressed, and
the link and highlighting information is stored separately from the text.
There's a Dr Dobbs article about the internals somewhere from the early-mid
'90s; it is very very far from complete, but will give you the gist.
> There is a HLP to HTML converter from Bluesky Research. They want an
> email rego but it free.
Definitely the way to go. It does just about as good a job as can be done in
converting - if you're really unlucky your .HLP will contain plug-in DLLs, and
it won't cope with those. It was also written by a fine musician :-) (BlueSky
bought all their .HLP descrambling tools from a company I used to work for - I
did a lot of the .HLP format decoding work, Rod the rest and wrote the tools.
Several lifetimes ago.)
A truly dedicated German (whose name I forget) released a DOS .HLP to RTF
converter about 5 years ago, and there was some source floating around
somewhere.
Finally, just in case you come across it, Bristol Technologies do/did a
Windows-compatible help system, but they didn't use the .HLP format; they
compile RTF to their own format.
--
Jim Hague - [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Work), [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Play)
Never trust a computer you can't lift.
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