LMD

LMD

London Medical Databases on-line help

With the introduction of Vista, Microsoft has taken the decision to drop support for the original Windows Help files (HLP).  Help files now need to be in HTML Help 1.x format (CHM) which are formed from HTML files and read using Internet Explorer, or if using .NET, help files can be created in MS Help 2.0 format and incorporated into Visual Studio.

London Medical Databases have an application written in Delphi that used old format WinHelp files for its on-line documentation and asked Polyhedron to convert the files to be compatible with Windows Vista (as well as previous versions of Windows).
The original text existed in RTF format, so this was converted to separate HTML files, one per topic and then tidied up with the relevant links, pop-ups, tables and pictures.  Microsoft's HTML Help Workshop was then used to combine all the HTML files into one CHM file and to create the Contents and Index entries.
The Delphi application then needed changing to refer to the new format files ensuring that all the topic IDs matched the new format.

The result is now a clean-looking Help File, compatible with Vista and previous versions of Windows, fully indexed and linked with context-sensitive access from the Delphi application.