The VIE LabVIEW HTML Help Generator is a tool that compiles fully searchable, indexed and linked chm (they're the same type as standard Windows help files) and html reports from your code. It compiles documentation from your VIs, front panel nodes, block diagrams, heirachy, etc and bundles it up into a neat and traceable package - perfect to deliver to your customer and great to include with your project in your SCC system (ever been asked to re-open a project that you haven't worked on for a while? The VIE LabVIEW HTML Help Generator will save you buckets of time in coming back up to speed on it!)

I'm no snake-oil salesman, but I don't expect you to take it from me! Here's an example: everyone knows about the LabVIEW Config File VIs in vi.llb:



Here's a compiled html file created by the VIE LabVIEW HTML Help Generator for some of the most often used LabVIEW Config File VIs:  HTML_Help_Generator_Example.zip ( 851.82K ) Number of downloads: 411


So what are you waiting for? It slices, it dices, it julianes, and you can put it straight into your dishwasher!*

If you'd like to get your hands on a free trial, click here and select the Code Reuse Solution Package.


(Actually, I'm not in Sales or Marketing - this is just a shout-out to let you know about a tool that I couldn't live without )


* Product does not slice, dice nor juilane. Do not place your computer in the dishwasher.

Chris:

I followed the link and registered, but did not see it on the list of downloads, see attached screenshot.

-AK2DM

If anyone asks, T&A Engineer is Test and Automation

Sorry - I should have mentioned - the VIE LabVIEW HTML Documentation Tool is part of the VISTA Code Reuse Solution Package - you get a couple of extra tools as a bonus


Sure it does Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I looked at the example output you attached, and it appears to be a very nice tool. My current project is still far from complete, but as we get to the end I will recommend that we look at this.



Reminds me of a NI Developer Education Day presentation that Brian Powell made in Boston. Brian's presentation talked about the development process for new features within NI. At the beginning, someone asked how many people were on the LabVIEW team and he answered "Everybody is on the LabVIEW team." Later on, someone asked how a new feature was put on the list for development and Brian said "Only a LabVIEW team member could do this."

I guess they provided too much coffee and sugary snacks that day, because I blurted out "I thought everyone at NI was on the LabVIEW team!" It was probably bad form on my part to say such a thing, and Brian seemed a bit uncomfortable with my comment. I obviously still feel guilty about it because I feel an need to share it


I guess in the the end we are all part of the sales and marketing group of our employer. Over the years I've seen xtaldaz, aristos and now Brian at these presentations. It's not their every day job to sell and market these products they've developed, yet they do it very well.

(Sorry Brian!)

OK I downloaded your total shameless plug, but I get a not-registered error when running the app, is there something I have to do?

Ton

Thank you In fact, if you use it in conjunction with our metrics tools, it's a good way to measure the progression of a project.Brian's got a pretty great sense of humour, so I wouldn't be too worried about stepping on his toes. He was probably unfomfortable because he had a great comeback that may have been politically innappropriate If you filled out the webform correctly, you should be receiving a key shortly.

I have downloaded your software, I have saw it. I have questions....
You could tell me how can I read in LabVIEW .chm file, edit it and write to.chm again?. I work now over a project which demands dynamically to upgrade .chm files and to show these changes immediately... Is there something I can do?

I'm not aware of a way to do that - the "c" in "chtm" is "compiled", so the VISTA LabVIEW HTML Help Generator creates the html files first and then compiles them into the chm file. Updating the chm file means rebuilding it completely.

You could write code to rebuild it yourself, but it's not going to be straightforward.

There are tools for extracting CHM files, although I haven't used any of them. Check out the Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help wikipedia page for information. And, if your looking to create your own reader/writer, then you can use the documentation, here, which somebody already reverse engineered.

Well that last link talks about IStorage file format. So this would mean it is basically an OLE structured document format just as the older MS Office file formats. The difficulty about this is of course that the OLE structured document format only defines the container structure but not the actual contents in the streams. It's much like XML without any schemata.

I'm not sure if chm is OLE structured document format but if it is, I think the description in that document is a bit limited. It may work most of the time but assuming that it will be always like this is going a bit to far. The actual layout concerning the different OLE streams could be changed by adding additional, non-standard streams to the document and suddenly the fixed offsets are not so fixed anymore.

Rolf Kalbermatter