I understand that a hxs file is a compiled help file, a replacement for .chm files, but I can't seem to open them.
I've read that you read them with the help explorer, dexplore.exe found here:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Help 9\dexplore.exe
When I try opening the file with dexplore, it asks me to save the file to disk, or open with another program.
Any ideas?
Not sure if you want to look through them programmatically or with some tool, but Help Explorer can open hxs files and extract contents. CHM files (the precursor to hxs) were a custom binary format with indexing and other data at the beginning of the file, and a zip archive in the rest.
You can also decompile hxs using HxComp.exe
EDIT: That link appears to be broken/down or something, but your answer did lead me to find Help Explorer Viewer, which may or may not be the same program, but it does the job.
Edit: I've deleted all broken links to spare confusion.
After a bit more research, it looks like these files must be installed into the IDE when you install 3rd party tools. There is a diagnostic tool called Namespace#. You can see details about it here:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/NamespaceSharp
HXS file extension - Microsoft Help compiled storage file. It is only one among the: HxI, HxS, HxC, HxT, HxK witch is known as MS HTML Help 2.
Help Explorer Viewer may be used to open this file.
Related
I have one .chm file in which Contents and Search tab are there. But Favourites and Index tabs are missing. IF I Want to add them in .chm file how can I do that?
I assume you don‘t have the original project with the project file (*.hhp) and the HTML files. If you have only the CHM file, there is no easy way to do this.
The missing index and favourites tab was originally not added by the help author. So you have to decompile the CHM file and compile again and you have to create the index yourself!
If you really want to start with Reverse Engineering decompling is described at:
http://www.help-info.de/en/Help_Info_HTMLHelp/hh_command.htm
For some first steps you don't actually need any tool to do this. Just open a command prompt window and type the following:
hh.exe -decompile <target_directory> <path>\<filename>.chm
The only decompiler with any additional features is KeyTools as this can try to rebuild the project (.hhp) file. You will need this file if you want to recompile the help project (see link above).
One thing to note is that the decompile/recompile process isn't a "round-trip" process; certain features that the help author added to the original help file can't be recovered when you decompile it, so these may no longer work properly after you've recompiled.
This is especially true in the area of context-sensitive help, which may be broken in the new version of the file.
For further information in help authoring and building CHM files see also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxVm_Edaus8
There is an excellent package to preview markdown written using sublime text. I wanted to know how I might modify it, or perhaps use it as the basis for writing one that could process multi-markdown.
I'm using Linux (Ubuntu) and I'm currently calling multimarkdown in the terminal on each file.
One of the issues I think I might face is that multimarkdown refuses to parse an open file for some reason.
Any thoughts on how I might begin this or if an alternative solution exists would be very gratefully received.
There is a MultiMarkdown option in the syntax list - View > Syntax > Markdown > MultiMarkdown. Isn't that working? By the way the syntax (and almost any other) files are in packages folder of Sublime Text 2. This is the syntax file:
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 2/Packages/Markdown/Markdown.tmLanguage
And MultiMarkdown file is in the same directory.
I'm intrigued by your statement that "multimarkdown refuses to parse an open file". Can you provide more information, or email me, or open an issue on github? MultiMarkdown doesn't check to see whether a file is open or not --- it simply reads the file and processes it. So if there's a problem, then the OS is not allowing MMD to proceed for some reason...
I don't have Sublime Text installed on Ubuntu (I generally use a command line only version of Ubuntu for testing MMD), so I can't test this situation exactly. I haven't had any other reports of difficulties parsing files (open or not). I don't have any trouble with Sublime Text 2 on Mac OS X and MMD.
As an alternative, you could try using one of the support scripts (e.g. mmd if you want MMD->HTML) and see if that has the same problem with open files.
PS> Are you using the latest build of MultiMarkdown, e.g. 4.2+?? (Though it shouldn't change anything related to open files)
I use a program that spits out HTML and hhp projects containing data from my databases.
I then compile that hhp with Microsoft HTML Help Compiler (hhc.exe).
It works well, but unfortunately for few projects, hhc compiles fine, but chm file is unusable.
It reports "Cannot open the file: mk:#MSITStore: FileName"
I have no problem with other chm files on my system. I have no problems with other chm I compile. If I remove several topics from my project produced file works again. It doesn't matter what topics I remove. Files that don't work are almost twice the size of files that work, even tho the html and project file is almost the same (very few changes), which leads me to think compression fails silently if size or structure of some file isn't right.
Does anyone have experience like this and what could be the reason?
For those that want to see example, this project will compile and work fine:
Working chm project
And this one compile but fail to open:
Chm that fails
I experienced the identical problem. The CHM was double the usual size and could not be opened. The CHM compiler did not report any error. Removing any random HTML file enabled opening the CHM. I generated many other CHMs on the same day, and all the others were OK.
I worked around the problem in the following way:
I added a very small HTML file to the project. It is a copy of one of the other files in the project, so if a user finds it in a search, it does no harm.
I entered the file name in the HHP.
I recompiled the project in the CHM compiler.
The CHM shrank to the normal size, and it opens normally.
I had exactly the same problem and can say it's all a matter of size and most likely an error in the compression module of hhc.
When I added some lines of documentation the size of the CHM-file increased from 1.6 to 3.1 MB and it could not be opened anymore.
This problem could not only be fixed by removing files but also by adding files.
So I wrote some additional documentation, added it to the project and everything was fine again.
There are a number of reasons why the MS HH compiler may crash.
(1) Invalid filenamesfile and file
The HTML Help compiler does not like some filenames e.g. spaces in a filename can still cause some minor problems with HTML Help. Best to replace spaces with underscores. Avoid "#" in file and folder names.
Try and stick with these characters _, a..z, A..Z, 0..9.
Do not use periods apart from in the normal file extension. Example: A filename such as xxx.h001.gif is identified incorrectly as a HTML file. The compiler then attempts to parse the binary file and crashes.
Do not use file or folder names containing ".chm".
(2) Avoid compiling on a network drive and try to compile on local drive.
(3) Use MJ’s Help Diagnostics to ensure that all the help viewer components are properly installed and registered.
http://helpware.net/downloads/#MJs
(4) Delete the file “hh.dat”, which you should find in this subdirectory:
\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Help
This file stores information about all the HTML Help files on your system (Favorites, window size and position, etc.), and can cause the files to misbehave if it has somehow been corrupted.
(5) You need to debug your help system. You need to identify the file(s) that are crashing the compiler.
I normally remove sections of the web by renaming or moving folders and files, then recompile. Keep adding and removing sections until the compiler does not crash. Eventually you will find one or two files that are causing the problem. You may also need to debug these files by temporarily removing sections of the HTML file.
I see 0 byte files in the input? Maybe the compiler can't handle that?
My open source project uses spaces, not tabs, in its code.
A contributor to the project has his own website which uses tabs, not spaces.
He uses Notepad++ in Windows to edit files for both projects, and is frustrated when he forgets to manually set the Preferences correctly and thus inserts tabs into my project's files.
Is there a way to edit this Preference via a script? That way he could click one icon to start Notepad++ in mode 1 (running a batch script to modify the Preferences file and then start the program) or click another to start in mode 2.
Or if there's any other way to make him not have to remember this chore, that would work too. Maybe having a Preferences setting that depends on what folder the edited file is inside of?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
The notepad++ setting for replacing tabs with spaces is stored in following xml file
%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Notepad++\config.xml
The following is the line that needs to be changed
<GUIConfig name="TabSetting" size="4" replaceBySpace="yes" />
Now I don't know how we can edit a file by batch script in windows, but if it is not possible, then he can keep two config files config-tabs.xml and config-spaces.xml. And in the script you can copy appropriate file depending on what he needs to work on.
I have a reference to the Microsoft Scripting Runtime (scrrun.dll) in one of my Access projects. If I open the object browser in VBA (by pressing F2) and choose 'Scripting' from the library dropdown it shows me all of the properties, functions, etc. for the Scripting library. If I choose one of these functions and then click on the help button (with the yellow question mark) it opens a help window with the title of 'Microsoft Visual Basic Help.'
It acts like it is unable to find the help file for this library. I can manually find the help file on my computer at the following location: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\VBA\VBA6\1033\VBLR6.CHM". (Note: I have 64-bit Win 7, thus the '(x86)' in the Program Files folder name.)
I tried copying the help file to the following locations with no luck:
"C:\Windows\Help\VBLR6.CHM"
"C:\Windows\SysWOW64\VBLR6.CHM" (I believe SysWOW64 folder is the Win7 64-bit equivalent of C:\Windows\System32)
I have had this same problem with other referenced libraries as well, so I'm looking for some kind of generic solution. I'm hoping there is some way to specify a location for the help file of a particular reference, or something else along those lines.
Copy VBLR6.CHM to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office10\1033\VBENLR98.CHM"
That's the short answer for this specific case...here's how to get there which may be useful for getting other help files associated:
Download Process Monitor (currently hosted here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx or do a Google search for Process Monitor)
Run Process Monitor with the following filter: 'Process Name' 'is' MSOHelp.exe 'include'
Open object browser in VBA
Choose the library (Scripting in this case)
Choose any function, property, or event in the library and click on the yellow question mark (this should open an empty window with the title Microsoft Visual Basic Help)
Go back to Process Monitor and scroll all the way to the bottom of the list; make sure the Path and Result columns are displayed
There should be dozens of 'PATH NOT FOUND' and 'NAME NOT FOUND' Results in the list. For each one of these results, there should be a corresponding Path where MSOHelp was looking for the help file. Choose any one of these and create a file with that path name. I chose to create a copy of the help file from its original location to the new spot and rename it to match what MSOHelp was looking for.
My best guess is that the scrrun.dll contains the name of the help file and over the years the dll stayed the same but the help file was renamed, modified, etc.