weblog.helpware.net

For Vista AP Help dabblers. 

Ulrich Kulle (Germany) has been playing with the Vista AP SDK and thrown together some rather nice GUI interfaces for the AP command line utilities.

• http://www.help-info.de/en/xHelpMarkup/welcome.htm
• http://www.help-info.de/en/xHelpMarkup/Main_Menu/Tools/decompiler.htm

Ulrick says Roundtrip decompile/recompile is working now with the BDD 2007 release of
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\SDKs\Help and Support\AP Help Compiler\X86\apcompnt.exe

Good work Ulrich I hope to find time soon to play with this soon (although I’ve been saying that for a few months now).

Thanks
Rob

For those of you who keep asking me… Yes there is a Help SDK (AKA Workshop) available for Windows Vista Help (Assistance Platform Help).

But its for Microsoft in-house and OEM use only (eg. Hardware manufacturers who need to integrate documentation into Windows Vista). If you are really curious download it and have a look.

The AP Help SDK is embedded in the “Business Desktop Deployment 2007″ which I think was released Jan ’07. Before that OEMs got it off the MS connect Beta web side.

• http://helpware.net/aphelp/default.htm
• Business Desktop Deployment 2007 Download Page

FAQ

• Q. Can I use AP Help SDK to integrated into Office 2007 help? 
• A. While Office 2007 service side (online) is AP Help, the local help (offline) is MS Help 2.x based same as Visual Studio help.
• See also
  http://helpware.net/mshelp2/CollectionWizard/Office12Help.htm

enjoy
Rob