HLP2DOC - Windows Help File to Winword Document File Conversion Wolfgang Beyer 30.6.94 (C) Wolfgang Beyer HLP2DOC is a DOS utility to convert a Windows 3.x Help File to a Word for Windows 2.0 Document File including formatting information. There is also a windows front end program H2DSTART for easy handling. This Version (1.37) of HLP2DOC is freeware, you may give it to anyone who want it. !!! Use HLP2DOC at your own risk !!! Please save any documents you have opened before you load a doc file that was produced by hlp2doc, there is a (small) possibility of winword crashing or hanging. Version 1.37 supports fonts arial, times new roman and courier at all possible sizes. Attributes bold, italic, underlined, strike through and as well as topics highlighting (green/underlined) are handled. Some colors are implemented, lines and boxes should be displayed. New: No more "Link Errors" on most help files I want to extend hlp2doc to support imbedded pictures (bitmaps), but I dont't know if I can do this. HLP2DOC uses up to 13 temporary files, be sure to have enough free disk space and at least FILES=20 in your CONFIG.SYS. Running from a ram disk gives you much better performance. HLP2DOC outputs a dot on every 8 KB written, so you can see if it is still working when processing a large help file. Command line ------------ hlp2doc [-p] helpfile[.hlp] or hlp2doc [-p] helpfile.mvb hlp2doc writes a file .doc to the actual directory, where is the name of the input file. When specified with the optional parameter '-p', hlp2doc puts a form feed at the end of each help topic, otherwise only two empty lines are inserted to save paper on printing. Known Bugs: ----------- - some HLP files run into a "link error", this may result in missing topics at the end of the DOC-file. - the default tab stops are always set at 0.8 cm, which is not appropriate for all files. Drawbacks: ---------- - Bitmaps (BMP) appear as big dot - HLP2DOC is rather slow, big help files may take some minutes - A maximum of 6 Tabulator stop positions is entered How it was done: ---------------- I have to thank Ron Burk and Peter Davis for their work on the structure of the Windows Help Files which was published in Dr. Dobbs Journal some time ago. In addition I had to spend a lot of time to analyze the mysteries of the HLP and DOC files, printing many sides of paper with hex dumps. I will upload a description of all that I found out on the DOC file structure as well as the HLP file structure soon, first I have to write it down in readable form. HLP2DOC is written in Turbo-C for DOS. Windows front end: ------------------ Steve Martindill wrote a windows front end for HLP2DOC named H2DSTART that I inluded in the distribution file. It needs the Visual Basic Runtime system VBRUN300.DLL that you can upload from various ftp server. History ------- Version 1.07 12.4.94 Initial release Version 1.08 15.4.94 Bugfixes: - HLP2DOC 1.07 crashed on HLP files with big paragraph formatting links (e.g. with more than 4 TAB definitions) - Some produced HLP files caused WINWORD to hang because of paragraph formatting information in wrong order - Text indenting was wrong in some cases (format code x81) Version 1.13 19.4.94 - Support of boxes, lines, colors and all font sizes, fonts courier and tnr - improved memory utilization (bigger help files are possible) - Bug that caused winword to crash in some cases corrected Version 1.22 16.5.94 Bugfixes: - Very big helpfiles can be processed. (winword.hlp 2.0 was successfully tested) - Adjusted default tabs - Crash on files with many internal files is fixed - Shifting of formatting information in some cases is fixed. Version 1.27 6.6.94 - support of winhelp tables Version 1.28 12.6.94 - Reads Phrases in Pieces, so help files with very big phrase tables now can be processed. Version 1.32 18.6.94 - Support of .mvb files - Correction of some bugs of the previous versions. Version 1.37 16.7.94 - Occurence of "Topic Link Errors" reduced. - Additional format codes supported. - 2 small bugs fixed. ------------------ HLPDC137.ZIP containing HLP2DOC.EXE, HLP2DOC.TXT (this text) and H2DSTART.EXE is uploaded to ftp.lrz-muenchen.de in directory /pub/comp/platforms/pc/windows. Any comments and suggestions are welcome. Email: beyer@lrz-muenchen.de.