Which options to integrate Help in WPF-App

Question

for my WPF-app, I need to add a help-system.
I searched a while came up with chm or xps-files. Chm looks a bit dusty and outdated but seems to be the best way for sensitive help.

Is that really still up to date or does anyone have a better idea, to solve that?

It doesn't have to be multilanguage but there should be a way to use the F1-key and also have a a navigation through different help-tasks.

So simple question, which options are available and still uptodate?

Thanks so far. Carsten

Answer 1

Let's imagine your question is about what options are available and still viable.

You can implement help using he built in Application.Help command. All you need to do is decide what it's going to do when invoked.

Options include:

Tooltip You don't need to limit yourself to just text - you can put pretty much anything you like in a tooltip. You don't even need a command. This can also be combined with other options.

Popup These aren't ephemeral like tooltips, you would need a close button or something. They appear on top of everything.

chm For text and graphics when you don't want to rely on the internet

Wiki When the internet will be available, you want complex flexible output and the option for non skilled super users to edit. This would rely on a fixed url link so you need to set up all your stub topics in advance. Basically, the user hits f1 and it's going to use the default browser to navigate to a fixed address you put in an attached property or tag of the field.

You can read more and see some sample code here:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/f2cc0ee5-51b4-47f7-acd4-12696d690f33/what-is-the-standard-for-context-sensitive-help-in-wpf?forum=wpf

Note that you could build complicated markup in a resource dictionary. Give it a key. Look it up and fill a tooltip/popup/modal dialogue dynamically.

Resource dictionaries can be merged even when uncompiled. One or more could be distributed by a web service.