An Australian PerspectivePre-Conference
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The WinWriters WinHelp 97 Conference was held in Seattle from 9th to 12th February, and I was amongst a small group of Australians fortunate enough to be able to attend. I was also stupid enough to present a case study on single source hypertext documents for Internet and WinHelp delivery. This was my second WinHelp Conference, so an added attraction was to meet up with some of the friends made the previous year.
The Conference had two components:
The pre-conference tutorials were held on the day before the conference, and attendees could choose two half-day sessions from six choices. The tutorials included HTML Design Issues, WinHelp Construction Basics, Graphic Standards and Techniques, WinHelp Writing and Design Basics, and Managing Help Development.
A Seattle-based consultancy and training company, Solutions, hosted a Chocolate Reception (which involved eating copious amounts of chocolate cake of every known variety). A few of us were also lucky enough to be invited to Mary Deaton's KnowWare pre-conference party, which was great fun. (Although the ride back to the hotel in a small car filled with eight people was a mixed blessing!)
The Conference is conducted by WinWriters, whose head honcho is Joe Welinske. Joe makes a habit of opening the conference with a snappy presentation involving music and video, and this year's was up to par. The first speaker was Ralph Walden, who is the lead programmer on the Microsoft HTML Help project. All of the 600 conference attendees packed the Grand Ballroom to hear Ralph update us on progress with HTML Help, what the main features were, what is likely to be included, and how it fits with Internet Explorer 3, Windows 97 and Internet Explorer 4.
The main points of Ralph's session, according to my notes, were:
The finished product will include the following features:
The iterative updating of a compiled .CHM file will function as shown in the diagram below.
The basic principle behind HTML Help is to provide key WinHelp features for information-based content in an HTML-based format.
The components of HTML Help are HHCTRL.OCX (the ActiveX control to provide a navigational interface), the context-sensitivity and windowing control (HTMLHELP.DLL), and the layout engine (SHDOCVW.DLL).
The table of contents interface within HHCTRL.OCX conforms to the WebMap standard data format, which is expected to be included in the next draft W3C HTML standard. WebMap permits a one to many jump (through a popup window), a changed topic marker flag, and a local/Internet marker flag. The Index component allows multiple level indexes and optional sorting.
Information types permit topic attributes to be stored, so that topics can be categorised in different ways. This will permit an option button to be selected by the reader to cause the table of contents to display all topics, or a subset of topics. This feature could be used to alternate advanced and novice user topics, or different language versions.
HTML Help will be released in May or June 1997. HDK will support HTML Help output, and is already supporting the beta release.
After Ralph's session, the conference allowed people to choose from three 1 hour sessions, with two lots in the morning, and two in the afternoon. The sessions covered the traditional WinHelp areas of interest, but about one third of the sessions were directly related to HTML and Internet/Intranet technologies. Of particular interest were the sessions on VBScript and Active-X.
The three days of the conference included the following sessions:
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One of the attractions of the WinHelp Conference is the opportunity to discuss documentation, hypertext and business with a group of like-minded people in a convivial environment. A number of events are organised by tool vendors and sponsors. This year, these included a RoboHelp lunch, a Microsoft reception, another Microsoft hospitality evening, and a ForeFront reception.
On the Tuesday, an expo was set up to permit vendors and solutions providers to display their wares. John Bradnam, Craig Sherod, Jayne Hansford and myself staffed the HDK stand. (Which was hard and unrewarding work.)
Then there was the Australian Cultural Evening for HDK users and anybody else brave enough to come along. Everyone participating was given a jar of Vegemite. (To Hell with the cost!) The event started in the Sheraton Hotel, moved to a restaurant that served damned good tucker, and then to the Pioneer Square portion of town. The night concerned was Tuesday night, and for those Christians amongst you, this was the day before Ash Wednesday. While this sometimes goes under the name Pancake Tuesday in Australia, it is also known as Fat Tuesday (which translates to Mardi Gras in Latin). So on Fat Tuesday in Seattle, a Mardi Gras is held in Pioneer Square, which means lots of bars open late and lots of good music. We did the right thing and got thrown out of one bar, and the evening ended with rum and rude jokes in someone's hotel room. I think everyone enjoyed themselves at the time, although something in the food gave a few of us headaches and tender stomachs in the morning. The photos that have returned from the digital camera give some idea of the flavour of the evening.
For the record, the Australians that I located at the Conference were:
We also adopted any New Zealanders that we could find, including:
A few Americans and British were also given temporary Australian citizenship, and are, according to reports, recovering well:
A lot of other friends were made. In conclusion, if you find your way to next year's conference, I can guarantee you will learn a lot, benefit professionally, and have a good time.
© 1997 HyperWrite Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.