Additional Files

The XLL+ Help Generator lets you add your own HTML files to a help project.

You can choose to have your HTML file processed so that it gets the same look as a generated help page.

AdditionalFile element

Each HTML file that you wish to add to your project should be described in an AdditionalFile element in the help file.

If you want to have the HTML file processed to get the same look a a generated help file, set the ApplyCommonFormat attribute to true, e.g.:

CopyXML

<AdditionalFile Source="MyFile.htm"  
                Title="My Topic" 
                ApplyCommonFormat="true" />

The Title attribute is ignored unless ApplyCommonFormat is true. If ApplyCommonFormat is true, then the additional file will be listed in the help project's table of contents, using the Title attribute.

If you are happy with the formatting of your HTML page, you can add it to your project without further processing by setting the ApplyCommonFormat to false. The file will simply be copied to the bin directory and added to the help project. It will not be added to the table of contents.

Additional HTML files (whether processed or copied) must be in the same directory as the help file.

File format

An HTML file that is to be processed using the common format must be in XHTML, and must contain a reference to the XHTML schema. In practise this means:

The following line must appear at the top of the file:

CopyXML

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

All stand-alone elements must be closed. For example, you must use <br /> instead of <br>.
HTML element names should be in lower case, e.g. <body>, not <BODY>.

Resource files

Your HTML files (whether processed or copied) may refer to other files, such as images or style sheets. Every such resource file must be in the same directory as the help file The help generator will include these files in the project automatically if they have one of the following extensions:

You can override the list of extensions by setting the CopyFileExtensions attribute of the Help element in the help file.

Alternatively, you can specify that one or more resource files be added to the project by using a ResourceFile element.