I'm working on a Windows Application that has been around more than 20 years. It has a help file (.chm) that is built manually outside of the solution (i.e. not by Visual Studio or MSBuild) by compiling it in Microsoft HTML Help Workshop 1.4 from 1999. I would like to migrate this to the latest format such that it can be built as part of the release mode build process.
Is there a way to import the project (based on .hhp file) into a tool that builds the modern .mhsc-format help files? According to this Wikipedia article there was something called Microsoft Help 2 which was "the help engine used in Microsoft Visual Studio 2002/2003/2005/2008", which came after HTML Help Workshop and was succeeded by Microsoft Help Viewer, which was supported starting with Visual Studio 2010.
Preferably, there exits a way to migrate the .hhp/.chm project directly to Help Viewer, or maybe I have to download VS2010 and do it in two steps if indeed those two migrations are themselves supported. This stuff is so old it's hard to find relevant information on it. Thanks.
MS Help Viewer (.mshc) was difficult to manage at the time. It was made mainly for companies like Microsoft who code their help from a database.
You'll find some viewers and tools like MshcMigrate e.g. getting you from .CHM and .HxS -> .mshc.
There is no longer any need to purchase a mshcMigrate licence. The licence is free to use See also free key.
If you expect the users of your application to have internet access, another approach is to publish the help as HTML pages on a web server and link directly to those from your application.
Before migrating please note (for your existing workflow) the CHM Viewer is part of the Windows OS. A special viewer isn't required.