Size of the WinHelp

[Fernando V. Jr.]

I've started to work with RoboHelp recently. My .hlp file is growing
up. The ammount of Mb. I have some doubts. Here they are:

1- Should I use .JPG instead of .BMP images, although they diminish
the quality of presentation?

2- How should I proceed to put images into my .DOC files? Should I
paste, special paste or insert the images? Does that makes difference
wheater the kind of file is .BMP, .JPG or .GIF?

3- Is there a way to diminish the size of the .DOC files? Is it would
make the .HLP be smaller?

[Pete Lees]

Fernando,

Post by Fernando V. Jr.
1- Should I use .JPG instead of .BMP images, although they diminish
the quality of presentation?

As I understand it, graphics in formats other than .bmp/.wmf are
automatically converted to .bmp by the help compiler. I remember
reading a post to this effect by Ralph Walden, Microsoft's WinHelp
architect. So, using JPEG images in the source files won't help this
situation.

There are several things that you can do, however:

1) Decrease the colour depth of each image. For example, many screen
snapshots require no more than 16 colours, and a 16-colour image is
very much smaller than one with a 64K colour palette.

2) Crop your images so that they contain only as much detail as
needed.

3) Omit graphics that aren't essential to the information you're
trying to convey.

4) Use maximum compression when compiling. There should be an option
to turn this on somewhere in the RoboHelp settings.

--
Pete (Microsoft Help MVP)