Hamilton Help Maker - Pointers, Feature Requests, and Bugs

1

Hi all,

I’ve been using the Hamilton Help Maker for a while now when creating help documentation for some custom Submethod Libraries (SMTs) and HSL libraries that we have. I’m overall pretty happy with its use, but wanted to share some pointers, Feature requests that I would like to see, and bugs that I have seen. I’ve been running this on Windows 11 Enterprise.

Pointers

  • When adding link, the URL you need to enter for your individual page is is the “NameofthePage.html”. Thanks @WillEb for the help there!
  • If you are importing a SMT, only the “Exported” functions will be automatically pulled in. If you wish to document any Not Exported functions, you will have to do so manually, or temporarily set your Not Exported Functions to Exported.
  • This is a great way to pull the Submethod description & parameter lists/descriptions out of Venus from any SMT library.
  • For some HSL libraries, the Hamilton Help Maker doesn’t always do the best job of correctly classifying the Direction of a parameter (sometimes a variable that is clearly labeled as “out” is given a direction “In/out”), so be sure to verify this!
  • For HSL libraries, it will not automatically pull in any private functions.
  • There is no data automatically pulled in for “Enumerations” type HSL libraries that do not have functions, but exist only to map a set of distinct, readable names to a group of constant values (Ex. Enumerations.hsl library that is part of the Liquid Class Library).

Bugs

  • Be careful using the undo button! Undoing past the first change you make to a HTML page effectively overwrites the current page with a copy of the data on the last worked on HTML page.
    • Ex. If I work on a “FunctionA” page, switch to “FunctionB”, type in a word, and then click the Undo button twice, then “FunctionB” will turn into a complete copy of “FunctionA” (Section ID does remain correct though).
  • I’ve seen issues when importing previously made chm files.
    • If I have added in a custom folders with pages, these will show up as blank when re-added to Hamilton help maker. Upon export, the custom folder/pages are still there but all of their original data is gone.
      • If you want to edit this custom folder, then you need to delete the page and start from scratch.
      • To get around this bug, I create a copy of the chm file and just copy paste the old page data onto the new one, and then make my desired changes. See my next bug below for important notes on page naming around that!
    • If you are working on a previously made chm file, deleting a page/section means that Section ID name is no longer usable. If I delete a “Help File Version History” page, and then try to add a page with that same name, then it will tell me “This ID is already in use. Enter a unique ID”. This is not an issue when making a fresh chm file/fresh custom Section ID.
      • To get around this bug, change the Section ID name for the page you want to delete (“Help File Version History” → “Help File Version History-td”), and then delete the renamed page. This will allow you to make a new page with the original Section ID title (“Help File Version History”) again.

Feature Requests

  • It would be nice to save “templates” for the help maker (like we are able to do with custom dialogs templates).
    • For example, I’ve been structuring these to have a “Version History and Dependencies” folder the comes after the Overview section but before the Functions folder, with a the Following pages:
      • Library Version History
      • Help File Version History
      • Library and File Dependencies.
    • Having a template that always includes this folder by default when importing HSL/SMTs/chm files would save some time.
  • For SMTs, having the option to have the Hamilton Help Maker automatically add in “Not Exported” Methods would be helpful. Same for private functions in HSL libraries.

I hope this is helpful for everyone, and thank you again @AlvaroCuevas_Hamilton for creating this tool!

2 Likes