We are trying to find a set of tools to generate context-sensitive help files (CHM) and manuals (CHM and PDF) from the same sources.
Features wanted are:
- able to deal with linked hypertext
- must be able to generate CHM and PDF from
- should be able to integrate documentation generated from code (currently XML comments)
- cross-file links would be great
- source format being plain text (SCM diff-able) would be truly glorious
I suppose that just about every software shop must have run into this problem.
How do you do this?
What tools do you use?
What’s your experience with those?
Edit: I thought every shop providing Windows software would have to solve this and many of you would have input for this. It seems I was wrong. although I still wonder how you all do this.
Anyway, thanks for the input of those who answered. We haven’t decided yet, but this bounty runs out in a few hours. Unless someone comes in with a glorious suggestion, since the answer suggesting docbook got the most up-votes, I’ll pick that one.
Have you considered DocBook? You can render that as just about anything. See this Code Project article for examples for CHM generation.