Re: How does Microsoft create the help files for Microsoft Word?

["Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

They appear to use a custom script that rips topics
from Word documents (and a few other types of source
files, too). I imagine they have a custom script that
organizes the resulting HTML files, and then feeds
them into their standard help compiler.

This META tag is from the What's New topic in Word
2000 Help; it shows some of the categories they use
for tracking and repurposing topics:

<META App='Word'
Project='wdmain9.chm'
FileName='woidxWhatsNewInMicrosoftWord97'
Feature='Whats New'
Handoff='3'
SourceFile='COOLFEAT.DOC'
Tnum='274279'
Piece='874'
Recycle='N'
>

and the CSS files are named:
<style>@import url(/Office.css);</style>
<link disabled rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
href="/MSOffice.css">

Looks like you can download the CSS files from the MS
web site, too:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/appndx/toolbox.htm

They seem to be in the Office Resource Kit; I'm not
familiar with that but maybe it has some other useful
stuff.

Mike O.

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