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VMS uses a Help file format for user and code documentation. I have created a Help file for a library. Is there a command to convert a VMS Help file to HTML?

CW Holeman II
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  • What *command* would you expect there to be? And would you expect it to be a VMS command or from somewhere else? Does whatever tool you used to create the VMS help file contain an option to export to HTML? Not sure how any of these things would be a programming related question. Seems more like [su] is appropriate for this sort of thing. – Ken White Dec 18 '19 at 01:06
  • The help file was created using a text editor. As part of creating the library in addition to the source code the help document is created. These are all part of the input to the build process for creation of the deliverable package. HTML is also a common format for documents which would be added to the build process by converting from the help format. – CW Holeman II Jan 22 '22 at 16:01

2 Answers2

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The simple answer is: no.

Almost all OpenVMS HELP files are generated from common documentation sources. The tool, which was used for that, was DECdocument. It can create printable documentation as well as PDF, HTML and HELP files. And you can select, which piece of information goes where. So the not so simple answer is, use such a tool to create both your HELP and HTML files. DECdocument was (is?) available as a product from Touch Technologies, Inc. Whether it is worth to buy it for "converting" some HELP files, I don't know. Whether the product includes all you need to do the same as the OpenVMS documentation group did, I don't know either. It is quite possible, that, to get the wanted output, you need some macros, or include files etc. which were used/written by the OpenVMS documentation group and therefore are not part of the product.

user2116290
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OpenVMS help documentation is located in the SYS$SYSHELP directory.

$ TYPE SYS$SYSHELP:[...]*those doc*.doc;/out=abcd.txt
$ mail/sub="help" abcd.txt
To:     your_email_id@emailxyz.com
$

Now, you will get the email in the body of the email and you can convert it into HTML.

Alessio
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Suresh Dooly
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