A help project is made up of several different files that are created automatically from your help document during the export process. Some of these files contain text and graphics that will appear in your help topics. Others will contain information about how your help system will look and how users will navigate through your help file.
Typically, the following files are generated:
- A help project file, also called collection file, which contains information about the location of topic files, compiler options, metadata, etc.
- A table of contents file, which contains the information that appears in the table of contents pane of your help file.
- An index file, which contains the information that appears in the index pane of your help file.
- One or more topic files, which contain the text that appears on each page of your help file. The topic files are linked by references or hyperlinks.
- Graphics and multimedia files, such as bitmaps, GIF or JPEG images, sound, video, animation, and other multimedia files.
The following graphic illustrates the dependencies between the files.
Depending on the target platform, the help project needs further processing. For instance, if you target Microsoft HTML Help 1.3 or Microsoft Help 2.0, all help project files need to be compiled with a HTML Help compiler into a single, self contained help file. If you want to create web-based HTML help, you can deploy the help project directly to your web server.