HelpScribble Apprentice
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About HelpScribble Apprentice

HelpScribble by Jan Goyvaerts (www.jgsoft.com) is "a full-featured, easy-to-use help authoring tool for creating help files from start to finish. You can create WinHelp (.hlp) files , HTML Help (.chm) files , a printed manual and online documentation (on a web site) all from the same HelpScribble project." It is especially useful for Delphi Component developers as it allows automatic generation of help topics from the pascal files. However, while HelpScribble is a good application for its price, it has some limitations and/or irritations. And since HelpScribble upgrades are free, new features or improvements are slow to appear. HelpScribble Apprentice is a free utility application which is intended as an adjunct to HelpScribble. HelpScribble Apprentice is not a stand-alone tool, while it can read and write HelpScribble files (*.hsc), HelpScribble is needed for some operations and to generate the final help products.


HelpScribble Apprentice provides the following features:

bullet Unique Topic Editor abilities (edit multiple topics at once, sort lines of text, Object Inspector-like view of help topic footnotes, smart copy-and-paste of multiple topics)
bullet Unique Table of Contents Editor abilities (edit multiple topics at once, delete parent topics AND their children with one operation)
bullet Sort Topic Text Wizard (Automatically sorts lines in selected topics after certain keywords... very useful for sorting the "See Also" topics that HelpScribble creates for pascal files)
bullet Class Hierarchy Wizard (Automatically adds hierarchy topic to selected Delphi Class/Interface topics)
bullet Blazingly Fast Move (Renumber) Topics Wizard (Order of magnitude faster than HelpScribble's), which can move and renumber topics while preserving relative topic numbering if desired
bullet Command Line Parameters to change project options
bullet Control-Clicking of Topic IDs to navigate around your help file as you are working
bullet Automatically create "See Also" topics for the current topic from its links using the Copy Links to See Also menu action
bullet Annotate your help file with ToDo notes that are attached to specific topics or your entire help file. Organize your Todos with the ToDo List Editor where you can add and delete ToDos, change them, and sort them by Category, Priority, Status, or Topic.
bullet Automatically create a new class property/method/event topic for a class using the Create New Class Member Topic dialog

 bullet

 Added Fix Delphi Links wizard which replaces the {LinkDelphi=} links with internet links to the docwiki.embarcadero.com

bullet Comes with a HelpScribble File Diff Tool for comparing 2 HelpScribble files (a lot easier than standard diff tools because HelpScribble Apprentice Diff makes it easy to see which topics have changed and to copy topics between the help files)

In most ways, you will be a LOT more productive in HelpScribble Apprentice than in HelpScribble.  Being able to edit multiple topics at once, use wizards to autogenerate a lot of information, and navigate around your help file like a web page makes HelpScribble Apprentice a worthwhile download.  There are also a ton of little things that just make the experience better, for example: drag and drop items around the Table Of Contents editor, specify Delphi Class, Property and Type links easily, and extra code formatting macros including DFM, XML, and VB code.

Please see the HSA Version History page for more details about the latest version of HelpScribble Apprentice.

Download

Click here to download latest version, updated for Delphi 2009+ and RichEdit 2.0.  Click here to download previous version which uses older RichEdit but may still work.


HelpScribble Apprentice is provided as a free utility. No warranties or guarantees are implied. Use at your own risk. Requires HelpScribble for generating help files.

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Last modified: September 20, 2010