| History
| HHUPD.EXE
| Version
Info |
| HH1.3
Changes | HHUPD 1.3 | Boxed
Windows | Internet
Explorer |
| WinHelp
Vs HH | Installing
HH | Collections
| More
Notes | Other Tips
|
Updated: 15-August-2000, IE5.5 kills zip files encapsulated in chm links.
Version
(hhctrl.ocx)Release Date Description Announced February
1996WinWriter's Conference, Seattle - MS announce plans to stop development of WinHelp and start development on HTML Help. 1.0
(4.72.7290)August
1997Help University Conference, San Diego - MS unveils HH 1.0. 1.0 ships with IE 4.0. Contains enough functionality to support IE4 help. 1.1
(4.72.7323)November
1997More functionality add. 1.1a
(4.72.7325)February
1998Released with Windows 98.
A few bug fixes.1.1b
(4.72.8164.0)July
1998Released with MSDN product.
Support for MSDN and MMC collections.
Hh.exe now supports "-map ID chm" command line.1.2
(4.73.8252)November
1998More stability. Advanced search features. Favorites Tab. HH Window now runs in a separate thread. HH 1.2 window types now stored with chm. HH 1.2 provides global window types ($global_) to ensure backward compatiblity. 1.21
(4.73.8412)April
1999Released with IE5 + Office 2000 + Win98 SE. Mainly bug fix release.
Note: IE5 will not install 1.21 if 1.0 or greater is found.1.21a
(4.73.8474)May
1999This release fixes a bug in 1.21 that prevented full-text search from working on CD-based Help files. 1.22
(4.73.8561)August
1999This release fixes three bugs in 1.21a that caused problems for Arabic, Hebrew, and Far East languages. 1.3
(4.74.8702)January
2000Released with Windows 2000. Contains Win2000 support including Unicode support. Now has a single OCX with multiple Language DLLs.
Note: IE5.5 install will only update your existing HH if it's version is earlier than 1.21 (4.73.8412), the version that shipped with IE 5.001.3
(4.74.8702)
Installer Only
(4.74.8703)March
2000HHUP.EXE installer upgrade only. Still installs 4.74.8702 files. Update is for people who try to install hhupd.exe on Win2000 systems. Previously you got a message "HTML Help 1.3 cannot be installed on Windows 2000". Now you get "HTML Help is a Windows system component and can only be updated via a service pack on this version of windows". 1.31
(4.74.8793)April
2000Minor fixes. 1.32
(4.74.8875)July
2000Minor update. Released with Internet Explorer 5.5 + Windows ME.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/tools/htmlhelp/chm/new.htm2.0 ?? In the pipeline. Sorry no news available.
hhupd.exe installs four main files plus some language DLLs. All ocx and dll files are registered.
Filename Description hhctrl.ocx Provides access to all main HH functions and services. In HH 1.3 we now have all language specific resources moved out into separate 28 language DLLs. Special Note: The default language, English, is always read from hhctrl.ocx, not from the English language DLL. This make swapping languages on English NT4 & Win9x systems almost impossible.
itss.dll The itss.dll file handles the its: and ms-its: pluggable protocols along with the hard-wired mk:@MSITStore protocol. It is also used for both compressing and decompressing files -- that's either done automatically via the three protocols (decompressing) or via the IStorage interface that itss supports (both compression and decompression).
itircl.dll Underlying full-text search hh.exe Windows uses hh.exe to open CHM files. It is installed to the windows directory. hhctrlui.dll 28 language specific resource DLLs (>= HH1.3 See more below)
hhctrl.ocx itss.dll itircl.dll hh.exe HH 1.2 4.73.8252.0 4.72.8084.0 4.72.7276.0 4.73.8252 HH1.21 4.73.8412 4.72.8084.0 4.72.7276.0 4.73.8412 HH1.21a 4.73.8474 4.72.8084.0 4.72.7276.0 4.73.8474 HH1.22 4.73.8561 4.72.8084.0 4.72.7276.0 4.73.8561 HH1.3 4.74.8702 4.72.8085.0 4.72.7277.0 4.74.8702 HH1.31 4.74.8793 4.72.8085.0 4.72.7277.0 4.74.8793 HH1.32 4.74.8875 4.72.8085.0 4.72.7277.0 4.74.8875 xx.xx.xx - file not changed since last version.
HH.EXE always has the same version number as Hhctrl.ocx.
Prior to HTML Help 1.3 we had a different hhupd.exe and thus hhctrl.ocx for each of the 28 foreign language installs. With 1.3 we now have one hhupd.exe that installs one ocx but 28 language dlls. After installing 1.3 you will find hhctrl.ocx in the Windows System folder as before, but now below the system folder is another folder called \mui which contains all the locale folders. Each locale folder contains a language resource DLL called hhctrlui.dll.
These locale folders are named using the hex representation of that locale's Locale ID (LCID). Thus the English locale's folder is named 409, the German locale's folder is named 407, the Japanese locale's container 411, and so on.
Example: Windows 95/98
\windows\system\mui\409\hhctrlui.dllMui I assume stands for Multilingual User Interface.
Note: You can always right-click a DLL and select properties to check version and language details.
When the HtmlHelp API (hhctrl.ocx) is loaded it gets the current locale and loads the resources from the appropriate locale folder. If the folder does not exist it simply defaults to the English resources found in the ocx. So if DLLs are not installed hhctrl.ocx still work and display English.
The immediate advantage for us as developers is obvious. We now have only one install file to download and distribute. We no longer have to detect the Windows O/S language and install the correct hhupd.exe.
Language & LCID ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 0401 Arabic 0403 Catalan 0404 Traditional Chinese 0405 Czech 0406 Danish 0407 German 0408 Greek 0409 English ** 040A Spanish 040B Finnish 040C French 040D Hebrew 040E Hungarian 0410 Italian 0411 Japanese 0412 Korean 0413 Dutch 0414 Norwegian (Bokmal) 0415 Polish 0416 Portuguese (Brazilian) 0419 Russian 041B Slovak 041D Swedish 041F Turkish 0424 Slovenian 042D Basque 0804 Simplified Chinese 0816 Portuguese (Standard)** Note that HH1.3 always reads English resource strings from the OCX not from the DLL as it should.
What version of Internet Explorer and HTML Help were shipped with Windows.
Windows Version Internet Explorer
VersionHTML Help
VersionWin NT4 --- --- Win 95 Original --- --- Win 95 OSR2 IE 3.x --- Win 98 IE 4.x HH 1.1a Win 98 SE
(June 1999)IE 5 HH 1.21 Win 2000
(December 1999)IE 5.01 HH 1.30 Win ME
(?? 2000)IE5.5 HH 1.32
HTML Help requires IE Version 3.0 or greater. You'll need to install IE4 if you need DHTML and advanced scripting, and IE5 if you need XML.
From http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q164/5/39.asp
IE Version Info
Note: Early versions of IE did not have a 4th version number, so be careful when reading version info from Shdocvw.dll that you don't turn say 4.70.1155 into 4.70.0.1155.
It may help to compare the HH files with WinHelp files.
WinHelp HTML Help Description .hlp .chm Main Help File. .hpj .hhp Project file. .cnt .hhc Table Of Contents file. HHC is compiled into the CHM file. .hhk Index file. HHK is compiled into the CHM file. hcw.exe hhw.exe Help Workshop. Free basic authoring tool from MS.
Earlier versions of hcw are hc31, hc, etc.winhelp.exe hh.exe Launches the help file. HH.EXE is just a small stub that calls the HTML Help API. hcrtf.exe hhc.exe Command Line Compiler. Hcrtf.exe isn't a console program, but it does take command line parameters and can be run from a DOS prompt. .rtf .htm, .html HTML Help is HTML based while WinHelp is RTF based. .bmp .dib
.wmf .shg.jpg .gif HTML Help uses HTML document graphics. .gid .chw
hh.datThe .GID file stores merged keywords (.CHW) and position/preferences information (hh.dat). .fts .ftg With HTML Help FTS information is stored inside the CHM .ann .bmk hh.dat WinHelp run time files for storing annotations and bookmarks. HTML Help 1.2 does not yet offer annotations, while favorites are stored in HH.DAT.
Creating an install program to get HTML Help on a customers machine can be tricky.
HHUPD.EXE
hhupd.exe is a free download from the MS Web. Use it to upgrade or install HTML Help on a customer's machine. HH requires that IE3 or greater be install first. HH actually uses the IE layout engine. The IE browser executable itself is not required.
To install quietly use the switches "/r:n /q:a"
For hh < 1.3, for non-english PCs your installation program should detect and install the appropriate language version of hhupd.exe.
Installing HHUPD.EXE
Check the version of HH before installing. Version info can be read from file hhctrl.ocx.
hhupd.exe installs the ocx into the windows system folder. Note however that the ocx could also be installed in the windows ocx cache via an ActiveX download from the web. So the safest way to locate hhctrl.ocx is via the registry. The full path to hhctrl.ocx can be found in the default value of registry key:
"HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{adb880a6-d8ff-11cf-9377-00aa003b7a11}\InprocServer32".
Installing Internet Explorer
Before checking for HH you should first check if IE is installed. Minimal requirement for HH is IE3.0 (not 3.02 as some think). If your help uses DHTML or XML then obviously IE4 or IE5 will be required.
The version of the installed IE can be read from the file Shdocvw.dll found in the windows system directory.
See the IE version information above.
IE Component Install
The easiest why to distribute IE to your HTML Help customers is under the IEAK Independent Software Vender (ISV) license. No reporting or strings attached. Fill in the registration form, download the required IE5 components and package it up. You must install IE5 in "passive" also known as "silent" mode which means no IE setup dialogs are to be shown.
License and registration: https://ieak.microsoft.com/en/License/isvlicense.asp
Note: The component install must be run in silent mode. This does not mean you try and hide the fact that you are updating their operating system. The IE browser is installed however the silent install mode does not create program folders and shortcuts. Netscape will remain the default browser if it was the default browser before the install.
IEAK IE5 ISV license agreement went public: 30-Jun-1999
Need Help? We have done this a few times. Feel free to email us if you get stuck.
Reading Version Info
Programmers can read file version info using the functions GetFileVersionInfo() and VerQueryValue(). The version info is stored in dwFileVersionMS & dwFileVersionLS items of structure VS_FIXEDFILEINFO.
For download info please see the Web Links Page.
There is a lot of interest in collections at the moment so here are some basic facts.
MSDN and MMC needed a way to "snap in" a CHM module at install time. So they built support for collections into HTML Help.
Each CHM should be compiled with binary toc, binary index and no merge information. The .COL file defines how the CHM modules are merged together at run time. HH API and HH.EXE can open COL files like a CHM.
Collections are not an open system at the moment. There is no documentation available.
The binary TOC is not compatible with
- "use folders instead of books".
- Custom TOC icons.
- Does not supports styles - things like single-click opening one book and automatically closing another book.
- Standard merge
However, binary TOC does allow you to add browse buttons to the top of your HH window. See htmlhelp.h for button Ids. The current TOC loaded in the HH window is used as the browse sequence.
.CHW CHW files are uncompressed CHM files, so you pick up a lot of compression by "recompiling". For example, the CHW file that ships with MSDN is 13 megs -- that can be recompiled down to 1 meg. KeyTools is free and is available at http://www.keyworks.net/ These are normally created on the fly, though you can ship them. They contain the combined index when two or more files are merged. They are not compressed, which makes sense if HH is creating them on the fly (compression requires a significant amount of memory, and can be fairly slow). However, if they are to be shipped, then compressing them makes a lot of sense -- Ralph.
.COL Collection files are used by MSDN and MMC help. The COL file can then be opened like any CHM file. HHCOLREG.DAT Another file required by MSDN help systems. It defines the location of all the .COL CHM files. Lives in %WinDir%\Help\ .CHI Another file required by MSDN help systems. Contains HTML Help Index info. To Generate add this HHP text [OPTIONS]
Create CHI file=Yes
Other HTML Help Files
Information on storage files and Workshop files.
Filename Description hh.dat Stores CHM position/preferences/favorites information. Delete %windir%\hh.dat to reset all CHM windows to their default settings.
HH 1.3 and greater now writes hh.dat into the folder
%windir%\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Help\Tip: The Favorites information is written to the hh.dat file, but not immediately, so there can be a timing problem if you close and reopen a CHM file in fairly quick succession.
From: Yuko Ishida <ishida@KEIYU.COM>
The location differs under other Windows.
Windows 98 single user
\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML HelpWindows 98 multi-user
\Windows\Profiles\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML HelpWindows 2000
\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML HelpWindows NT 4.0
\Winnt\Profiles\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Helphha.dll Compiler Code Module. Used by both hhc.exe and hhw.exe to compile help. Note: One problematic area of swapping versions is HHA.DLL. When HTML Help starts up, it looks to see if HHA.DLL is around, and if so, loads it and uses it for authoring messages, diagnostics, etc. If you right-click on a non-binary TOC, choose View Entry and get a GPF, then you can be fairly certain you have a mismatched version of HHA.DLL. Of coursing swapping HHA.DLL also means you are changing the compiler, so you shouldn't automatically change HHA.DLL when switching HH versions unless you don't mind changing compiler versions.
Registry,
hh.ini,
winhelp.iniTo help windows locate a help file, place the name of the help file in a special registry key or ini file. CHM's
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\HTML Help]
Name = myfile.chm
Data = "c:\chmfolder\"Or use HH.INI (see below)
HLP's
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Help]
Name = myfile.hlp
Data = c:\hlpfolder\Or use WINHELP.INI (see below)
You do not need to reboot a Win95 machine for the registry to work. The primary advantage of the hh.ini file is that you can add a prompt to tell the user something should the file not be found. That's particularly useful if the CHM file is on a CD-ROM and you need to tell the user to insert a specific CDROM disk. The format is identical to the WinHelp.ini file. The following docs are taken from the hcw.hlp file and modified for HTML Help:
[FILES]
HLP-filename=path, messageExample
The following entry instructs Help to look in the \Product\Files folder on drive P for the Notepad Help file. If necessary, Help will prompt the user to insert a CD into the drive:
[FILES]
Notepad.chm=P:\Product\Files, Please insert your Windows 98 CD into drive P..ITS Files (cousin to .CHM) Posted by Ralph Walden 22/June/2000 An .ITS file is associated with the I.E. browser -- which means if you double-click it, it will be displayed within the browser rather then the HTML Help window. What will be displayed will be default.htm. You can, of course, link to files within an ITS file just like a CHM file. You can create an ITS file by either compiling a CHM file and then renaming it, or by setting the .ITS extension in your project file. However, I would not recommend this if you are going to use the file in HTML Help -- from HH's perspective, there's no advantage to the different extension, and you rely on the HH team remembering to ALWAYS check for the .ITS extension whenever they check for the .CHM extension (in other words, any easy mistake for them to make). If you are only going to be displaying the file inside the I.E. browser, then you should definitely change the extension -- that way the user can double-click it and have it displayed in the browser.
While the file format of a CHM and ITS file is the same, if you are going to be displaying an ITS file only inside of the browser, then there's some internal files that aren't necessary. If you recompile the ITS file using KeyTools, then it will remove those extra files. That will reduce the size of the ITS file by about 8K, will still work just fine inside of the browser, and will probably make HTML Help very unhappy (so don't use an ITS file with HH).
ITS files viewed by the browser are handled entirely by ITSS.DLL. That particular component has been remarkably stable -- essentially it is unchanged since the release with I.E. 4.0. That means hhupd is not necessary for displaying an ITS file within the browser as long as the user has I.E. 4.0 or above.
BTW, if you are using I.E., and you go out to my web site (www.keyworks.net) and look at the address once you get there, you'll notice that you are looking at an ITS file. No, this is not a way to deliver a single HTML file out of an ITS file -- you did download the entire ITS file. However, that ITS file is 6K and holds some 20K of text -- which means in about the time it would have taken you to download a single HTML page, you've downloaded most of the web site. Links within the site are quick even with a 28K modem because you don't have to connect back to the site and download more text -- it's already on your machine. The ITS file is treated like any HTML file in that it is discarded as part of the history flushing that I.E. does automatically.
Words from Wizard Ralph and Others
Filename Description Changing Versions Generally, you don't need to reboot. If you can change hhctrl.ocx at all then you have effectively changed the version of HTML Help. What you may find is that you get an access denied when trying to delete or copy over a different version of hhctrl.ocx. There are times when hhctrl.ocx will be loaded with no visible window and while it's loaded, you can't delete or replace it. In that case, you will need to reboot your system. But aside from that, there is no reason to reboot just to change versions of HH. Try this under 1.2: Download say the French hhudp.exe. Use WinZip to extract the hhctrl.ocx. Replace the current hhctrl.ocx with the French version. Run a CHM and you will see the French interface.
ms-its: CHM files are accessed through a pluggable protocol (ms-its:) which in turn uses the IStorage interface to read the HTML and other files and hands them to the caller. Look up "protocol" in the Search tab of the latest MSDN. Looks like it's also part of the Internet SDK documentation.
CHM File Format CHM files are stored in what in techie-speak is called an IStorage format. That allows you to read any of the files within a CHM file without having to know the storage format. Source code for doing that is part of the source code package at http://www.keyworks.net/code.htm (see the CItsFile class). Compiling HHC.EXE is an extremely simple program -- all it does is take your .HHP, hand it to hha.dll to compile, send any output messages to your screen, and exit when done. HHW does the exact same thing, except that it also displays some animation to let you know that the compiler is doing something. Authoring tools which support compiling do the same thing -- they may do some pre-processing of the project file, and post-processing of the output file, but in the end, they all call into hha.dll to do the actual work of compiling. Threads When HTML Help is on the same thread as the calling application, it is possible that the calling app can trap keystrokes that were meant for HTML Help. That means that you could bring up an HH window, enter some text in the Index tab, press Backspace, and the Backspace keystroke gets sent to the application instead of the HH window. While I was at MS, there was only one program that exhibited this problem, which is why 1.0 and 1.1 use the caller's thread. 1.2 switched to a separate thread as the default. However, this can cause its own problems. For example, if you use the 1.1 version of HHW with the 1.2 version of HHCTRL, switching to the Help tab in HHW will cause a hang because the HH TOC control doesn't initialize correctly when run off a thread (at least, not from HHW).
For the vast majority of programs, it won't make any difference if HH is on a separate thread or not. If you are having timing problems between your program and HH (for example, delayed drawing of the HH window), or you are using the HH TOC ActiveX control and it is hanging, then you might want to try the HH_INITIALIZE approach.
HH Embedded The way you created embedded windows between 1.1 and 1.2 changed. There's usually two additional things you must do to get your HH embedded windows to work in 1.2 -- they'll still work in 1.1 with these changes, so you should always do this.
- In addition to setting HHWIN_PROP_NODEF_STYLES you must also set HHWIN_PROP_NOTITLEBAR -- otherwise you'll end up with a frame window instead of a child window.
- You window style must include WS_CLIPCHILDREN or your embedded window may not show.
BTW, since you are using MFC, you might want to take a look at www.keyworks.net/code.htm -- there's source code there for an MFC class that will create an embedded help window in a dialog that you should be able to easily modify to get it to work in your CControlBar derivative.
Text Blocks >I searched the archives for this but didn't find anything. I'm wondering
>where MS HTML Help Workshop text blocks are stored.They are stored in the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\HTML
Help Workshop\Settings -- buf1, buf2, ... buf9
Changes since HH 1.2x
MS HTML Help Web Site
New web site
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/tools/htmlhelp/chm/HH1Start.htmDocumentation Set
api.chm - Updated
hhaxref.chm - No change
htmlhelp.chm - Updated
viewhlp.chm - No changeA Japanese version of the documentation is also available.
Changes to Workshop
Workshop contains minor fixes plus no more 3001, 3003, 3005 warnings and no more crashes caused by spaces in URLs in large indexes or TOCs.
3001 - The file "%s" has a link to a non-existent file: "%s".
3003 - The HTML tag "%s" has invalid characters appearing before the closing angle bracket: %s
3005 - The HTML end tag "%s" has invalid characters before the closing angle bracket (>).readme.txt -- Woops!! - An empty file.
The duplicate files htmlhelp.lib and htmlhelp.h in the root have been removed. Readme.htm has been replaced by readme.txt.
\redist\hhupd.exe -- Take care. Workshop installer appears to be using a new installation program which is not overwriting any previous versions of \redist\hhupd.exe. Several people have installed workshop over old installations and have noted that \redist\hhupd.exe remains at V1.2.
30-Jan: I just did a folder compare with a file sync program. Hhupd.exe is not the only problem. When the new install program installs over the top of a 1.2 workshop installation it also neglects to update 16 support DLLs in the HTML Help Workshop folder. So best to do a clean installation.
BTW: Great shareware program. Download FileSync from http://www.fileware.com/. Pointed it at my pure 1.3 workshop install folder and my overwritten folder. It showed me the 16 DLLs plus HHUPD.EXE that were different in date then allowed me to press a button and update the DLLs in my overwritten folder. Nice.
Changes to hhupd.exe
The 28 individual international versions of hhupd.exe have gone. Now there is only a single hhupd.exe that installs HTML Help runtime files plus 28 language resource DLLs (see below).
HH 1.3 now writes hh.dat (window position info etc) to the folder %windir%\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Help\
- Workshop WinHelp to HTML Help convert does not working under Japanese Windows. Workshop says that a DLL is missing. Fix: Use 1.2x Workshop for now. [Status: Reported]
- Some people see font changes happening in the TOC and Index tabs when viewing old and new CHMs under HH 1.3. [Status: Watching]
- Installing over old workshop does not updated some HTML Help Workshop folder DLLs and HHUPD.EXE. Fix: Install to new folder. [Status: Reported]
- TOC Sync problem in merged help. I have several CHMs merged. The Master CHM is the host and has a Topic "Fred.htm". All my other TOCs used by other CHMs include a link to Fred.htm as well. EG. its:master.chm::/fred.htm. So in my merged TOC I have several TOC items linking to a single Fred.htm in master.chm. The problem is this -- When I click on any Fred.htm TOC link the TOC syncs to the next Fred.htm in the in the merged TOC. The TOC pointer should obviously stay where it was clicked. Note: When you click the TOC Fred.htm item (original) in the master TOC all is OK. Problem in 1.2x as well. [Fix: Don't Merge]
- Since upgrading to HH1.3 yesterday, my Related Topics buttons, which were Alinks displayed on a pop-up menu, are now displaying in the Topics Found dialog box. "phillips, angi" <angi.phillips@SERUK.COM>
Ralph Walden: I asked Shane about this and he responded with:
"This will happen if the language of the OS doesn't exactly match the language of the chm. The problem is that in some cases this mismatch causes garbage in the menu (if the language of the chm can't be displayed in the font the system uses for menus), so we fall back to the Topics Found dialog, in which we can set the font."Note: A newer version of HH is now available which fixes some of the above bugs. Unfortunately Windows 2000 system files can only be updated via an official W2K service pack.
PDF & ZIP Files Many authors compile PDF and ZIP files in CHMs and use standard HTML code to link to the file.
EG. <a href="myfile.pdf">View PDF</a>Problem 1: If the PDF viewer (Acrobat Reader) embeds in the HH window instead of opening in a separate window, you will see a blank topic window. This is an Adobe bug (says MS).
Solution: You can turn off embedding from within Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 4. Start Adobe Acrobat Reader and go to File | Preferences | General (Ctrl-K). Then, unselect "Web Browser Integration".
Problem 2: Internet Explorer 5.5 causes problems with linking to ZIP (and PDF?) files encapsulated in a CHM file. It is no longer possible. Other file types appear ok. The bug appears to be a side effect of a security fix released with IE5.5. The HH team were unaware of the problem.
Solution: Leave the PDF and ZIP files outside the CHM in the same folder as the CHM. Use the HH Shortcut command to link to the external file (see HH Workshop help for more info).
<OBJECT id=Myhhctrl type="application/x-oleobject" classid="clsid:adb880a6-d8ff-11cf-9377-00aa003b7a11">
<PARAM name="Command" value="ShortCut">
<PARAM name="Item1" value=",mfile.pdf,">
</OBJECT>
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