Microsoft Help Viewer

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File Format
Name Microsoft Help Viewer
Ontology
Extension(s) .mshc, .mshi, .msha
Released 2010[1]

Microsoft Help Viewer, also known as[2] Microsoft Help 3, is a help format developed by Microsoft. It is much simplified compared to previous formats, with no project format or compiliation step; it is simply a ZIP file, renamed with the extension ".mshc" ("Microsoft Help Container"[3]), of the relevant resources, the main help pages being in XHTML[4]. There were two versions, "HV1" (2010[1]) and "HV2" (2012[1]), which are "basically the same[;] HV2 has a few more meta statements but these wont [sic] break backward compatibility."[5] The major difference between the versions was in the main implementation (and/or API) of the software that read them.[5][6]

The .mshc file might come alongside a pregenerated search index with the extension ".mshi"[7]; or also an HTML "Product Manifest file", with the extension ".msha"[8], which specifies the organization of multiple .mshc files[9]. It might also be packed into a CAB file.

Like Microsoft Help 2, which it succeeded, most uses of Microsoft Help Viewer mentioned online seem to extend to documentation of software development tools.[10]

Links

See Also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Microsoft_Help_Viewer&oldid=952518472#History
  2. ↑ http://kb.helpwaregroup.com/ms-help-viewer/hvinfo → Introduction, here called "MS Help 3"
  3. ↑ http://kb.helpwaregroup.com/ms-help-viewer/hvinfo#TOC-.MSHC-Microsoft-Help-Container---Help-file
  4. ↑ http://hv2.helpmvp.com/doc/file-format
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 http://kb.helpwaregroup.com/ms-help-viewer/hv2info
  6. ↑ http://mshelpwiki.helpmvp.com/mshelp/help-viewer
  7. ↑ http://kb.helpwaregroup.com/ms-help-viewer/hvinfo#TOC-.MSHI-Microsoft-Help-Index---Index-fragment
  8. ↑ http://kb.helpwaregroup.com/ms-help-viewer/hvinfo#TOC-.MSHA---Product-Manifest-file
  9. ↑ http://kb.helpwaregroup.com/ms-help-viewer/hvinfo#TOC-Packages-Books-Catalogs
  10. ↑ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/help-viewer/overview?view=vs-2019
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