Windows hlp тип файла

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WinHelp

Microsoft WinHelp

Microsoft WinHelp is a proprietary format for online help files that can be displayed by the Microsoft Help browser winhelp.exe or winhlp32.exe. The file format is based on Rich Text Format (RTF). It remained a popular Help platform from Windows 3.0 through Windows XP. WinHelp was removed in Windows Vista purportedly to discourage software developers from using the obsolete format and encourage use of newer help formats. Support for WinHelp files would eventually be removed entirely in Windows 10.

• 1990 – WinHelp 1.0 shipped with Windows 3.0.
• 1995 – WinHelp 4.0 shipped with Windows 95 / Windows NT.
• 2006 – Microsoft announced its intentions to phase out WinHelp as a supported platform. WinHelp is not part of Windows Vista out of the box. WinHelp files come in 16 bit and 32 bit types. Vista treats these files types differently. When starting an application that uses the 32 bit .hlp format, Windows warns that the format is no longer supported. A downloadable viewer for 32 bit .hlp files is available from the Microsoft Download Center.^[2][3] The 16 bit WinHelp files continue to display in Windows Vista (32 bit only) without the viewer download.
• January 9, 2009 – Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) for Windows Server 2008 at the Microsoft Download Center.^[4]
• October 14, 2009 – Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) for Windows 7^[5] and Windows Server 2008 R2^[6] at the Microsoft Download Center.
• October 26, 2012 – Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) for Windows 8 at the Microsoft Download Center.^[7]
• November 5, 2013 – Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) for Windows 8.1 at the Microsoft Download Center.^[8]
• July 15, 2015 — Microsoft completely removed Windows Help from Windows 10. Attempting to open a .hlp file just brings users to a help page detailing that it was removed.^[9]

A WinHelp file has a «.hlp» suffix. It can be accompanied by an optional table of contents (.cnt) file if the help developer created one. When Windows opens a WinHelp file, it creates a .gid file in the same directory or in «%LOCALAPPDATA%\Help«, containing information about the .hlp file such as the window size and location. If the user clicks the «Find» tab and enables keyword indexing, Windows creates an index file with a .fts (full text search) extension. Annotations and bookmarks for each Windows help file have the extension «.ann» and «.bmk».

A number of software tools can decompile a WinHelp file into its source documents: HPJ, CNT, RTF, BMP, and SHG. An HPJ file is the project file that is created and edited in the Help Workshop (or a third party help authoring tool). The HPJ contains information about what RTF files to compile into the help, the MAP IDs and Aliases that provide links from a calling application to the help file, and help file appearance (window size, default buttons, color schemes, etc.). The CNT file provides the table of contents for the help file. An SHG file is a «SHED» graphics file that essentially creates an image map of help calls for a graphic file (e.g., a BMP).

A number of tools can read and explore these files. (See, for example, Help to RTF and winhelpcgi.)

Summary on winHelp files

Source files required to compile a .hlp file consist of one or more documents in Rich Text Format and a help project file with the extension .hpj, along with any image files (.bmp, .wmf, or .shg) that are used within the Help file. An optional table of contents file with the extension .cnt can also be created for use with the .hlp file.

Within the .rtf files, topics are separated by page breaks. Each topic has a series of footnotes that contain information for the help compiler:

# footnotes contain the topic ID (used to create links to that topic).

$ footnotes contain the topic name as it displays in the table of contents, index, and other locations.

K footnotes contain keywords for the index.

A footnotes contain See Also keywords.

* footnotes contain build tags.

+ footnotes contain browse sequence information.

! footnotes contain topic entry macros.

Only the # footnote is required. All others are optional.

Text in each topic can contain limited formatting, including bold text, italics, and colors. Superscript and subscript are not allowed. Jumps between topics in the same Help file usually appear in the source document as double-underlined text (green by default, though this can be overridden) followed by a topic ID in hidden text. Popup links appear in the source document as text with a single underline (also green by default) followed by a topic ID in hidden text. (In the .hlp file, the jumps show up as green text with a single underline, and popups show up as green text with a dotted underline.)

Images can be added using codes such as {bmc image.bmp}. Supported image formats include .bmp, .wmf, and .shg (used for image maps, which can contain jumps or popups that are triggered by clicking on specific parts of the image).

After the source files have been created, the help file can be compiled using a WinHelp compiler such as HCW.exe or by using a commercial software program such as RoboHelp or HelpBreeze, most of which (included the two cited here) also use hcw.exe as the backend compiler.

Depending on how it has launched and what settings the Help author chose, a WinHelp file opens either to its default topic, its table of contents, or its index.

A topic in a WinHelp file opens in a separate window, in a size and initial position that the Help author may choose. Users can resize or reposition the window. The Help author can control whether the Help file stores the user’s settings between sessions, or always opens in the default size and position.

When a topic is open, a title bar at the top of the Help window displays the topic title. Below that is a row of menus (File, Edit, Bookmark, Options, and Help), which control various aspects of the file. A row of buttons usually appears below the menus. The Help author controls which buttons, if any, appear. Typical buttons include Contents, Index, Back, and Print, along with << and >> buttons to browse through the file. Help authors can also create custom buttons to jump to specific topics or perform other actions.

Below the buttons is the main text area of the window. Typically, the text begins with a heading, often bold or in a larger font than the rest of the text. This heading may sometimes be in a non-scrolling region—an area of the window that does not move up or down via the scrollbar at the side of the window. Non-scrolling regions can only be used at the beginning of a topic. The Help author can control size and background color of a non-scrolling region.

Help authors can also control the background color of the main text area, where the actual text of the topic appears. This text can be formatted and arranged in many ways. Within the text, jumps appear as green text with a single underline. Single-clicking on a jump opens a different topic. Some jumps may open secondary Help windows to display information. Popups appear in the text as green text with a dotted underline. Single-clicking on a popup opens a small window with no menus, buttons, or scrollbars, sized to fit the text. Often, popups provide short definitions of key terms or other supplemental information about the main text. The popup automatically disappears the next time the user clicks or presses a key.

Many, though not all Help topics have See Also jumps at the end of the text. Depending on the Help author’s preference, this feature may be a simple list of jumps under the heading See Also, or it may be a small button that, when clicked, brings up a dialog box displaying all the relevant topics. Clicking on the name of a topic in that dialog box then clicking Display opens that topic.

Most Help files also contain a table of contents and an index to help users locate information. These appear in a separate, tabbed window. Clicking on the Contents tab opens the table of contents, in which users can click on headings to see the topics. Often, headings are marked with icons that look like small books and the topics have icons that look like pages. Double-clicking on a topic (or clicking on a topic then clicking Display) opens that topic. Clicking on the Index tab opens the index, which has a typing field and an alphabetical keyword list. Typing in the typing field automatically scrolls the list of keywords to the closest match. Double-clicking on a keyword (or clicking on a keyword then clicking Display) displays the topic associated with that keyword (if only one) or brings up a list of all topics associated with it. The index is important in helping users locate information. Sometimes Help files also have a Find tab, which lets the user search for any word used in the text of the file, not just for keywords.

WinHelp also supports a feature known as context-sensitive help. Context-sensitive help is assistance that is appropriate to where the user is in the software application, and what they are trying to do.

A rather security critical feature is that one can also include a DLL file containing custom code and associating it with WinHelp topics. Effectively this makes .HLP files equivalent to executables.

At the 2006 WritersUA conference, Microsoft announced its intentions to phase out WinHelp as a supported platform. Ted Dworkin (Partner Director of WinHelp Experience) stated, «WinHelp does not meet the code standards established for Vista. These standards include security, reliability, and performance.» He went on to say that WinHelp is designed in such a way that, «…we would have to rewrite it from the ground up to meet the Vista code standards. And that approach doesn’t make sense given that we have two other Help systems in Vista.»^{[citation needed]}

The updated licensing agreement prohibits application developers from packaging the WinHelp libraries with their installers. This means that WinHelp manuals for legacy applications are not readable on a new Windows Vista (or higher version) installation. To read them, the end-user must obtain the 32-bit WinHelp viewer from Microsoft’s website and manually install it.^[10]

In Windows 10 and later, Microsoft does not offer a WinHelp viewer for the operating system. The last version of Windows on which it was possible to open and read WinHelp files, using an official downloadable component by Microsoft, is Windows 8.1. The open-source version of winhlp32 from Wine also works on Windows 10. It is included as part of WineVDM. Also on Windows 10 WinHelp works with winhlp32.exe from older version of Windows.

Although documentation can be maintained entirely in a vendor-specific presentation format such as WinHelp, it is more often the case that documentation must be published in multiple presentation formats at once: Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM), WinHelp, HTML pages, Java Help, PDF, etc. It would be very expensive and error-prone to maintain each format separately.

For this reason, authors often maintain documentation in an industry-standard, vendor-neutral authoring format—such as DocBook or FrameMaker—that can be used to generate several different presentation formats (including WinHelp).^{[citation needed]} Various presentation files thus produced (with WinHelp or other tools) contain consistent content because they were generated from the same source.

• Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (.chm file extension)
• Microsoft Help 2
• Microsoft Help Viewer
• OS/2’s INF Help (also known as IPF or Information Presentation Facility)
• Microsoft Windows Help and Support Center, online and offline reference manual for troubleshooting, used until Windows 8.1

• Help-Info: Information around Online Help (Microsoft), Examples, etc.
• HelpMaster: Largest selection of WinHelp, HTMLHelp and HTML related files and hints
• MS’ help systems, a list of MS help systems and associated tools from an unofficial specification

Для чего нужен файловый формат .HLP?



Как сокращение от «Help» (справка) файловое расширение .hlp относится к типу и формату файлов «Справка Майкрософт Windows (WinHelp)» (.hlp). WinHelp является частным форматом, разработанным Майкрософт для сохранения файлов встроенной системы помощи в ОС Майкрософт Windows. Будучи давно устаревшим, формат WinHelp был заменен более совершенной системой справки CHM (Компилированная HTML-справка Майкрософт).

Файл .hlp содержит ресурсы справки операционной системы или приложения, скомпилированные в особом двоичном формате из исходных файлов RTF и BMP. В среде Майкрософт Windows обработчиком файлов .hlp выступает исполняемый модуль WinHelp («WinHlp32.exe»). Последней ОС Майкрософт со встроенной поддержкой WinHelp является Windows XP, при этом более поздние ОС (Windows 7, изначально не поддерживают файлы WinHelp. Чтобы обеспечить пользователям возможность открывать файлы .hlp на таких ОС, Майкрософт предоставляет автономный установщик WinHelp.



Существуют сторонние средства преобразования файлов WinHelp (.hlp) в CHM и HTML, а также декомпиляции в RTF. Также несколькими универсальными программами для просмотра документов поддерживается непосредственное открытие файлов HLP. Несмотря на устарелость WinHelp, файлы .hlp по-прежнему встречаются в составе многих приложений Майкрософт Windows прежних выпусков.



Помимо WinHelp, расширение .hlp также повсеместно используется различными программами для обозначения типовых файлов справки (.hlp). В зависимости от использующего такой файл .hlp приложения он может быть как текстовым, так и двоичным. Тем не менее, большинство старых Windows-приложений чаще всего используют формат WinHelp.



Программы для открытия или конвертации HLP файлов

Вы можете открыть файлы HLP с помощью следующих программ:



Чем открыть, описание – 1 формат файла

Заголовок и ключевые строки

HEX: 3F 5F 03 00

ASCII: ?_

Подробное описание

Файл HLP — это скомпилированный 32-разрядный файл справочной документации для операционной системы или программы, сохраненный в стандартном формате Справки Windows (Winhelp). Файлы HLP содержат связанные между собой статьи, описывающие работу программного обеспечения, и как правило, создаются при помощи специализированных приложений для разработки документации, таких как Help & Manual.

Просмотр файлов справки осуществляется встроенными средствами операционной системы — в программе Справка Windows (WinHlp32.exe). Данный компонент не входит в состав новых версий ОС т.к. поддержка формата HLP в них была прекращена. Для просмотра файла справки HLP пользователю необходимо самостоятельно загрузить и установить WinHlp32.exe из центра загрузки Microsoft.

Как, чем открыть файл .hlp?

Инструкция — как выбрать программу из списка, скачать и использовать ее для открытия файла

Для более точного определения формата и программ для открытия файла используйте функцию определения формата файла по расширению и по данным (заголовку) файла.

How to Read .HLP Files in Windows 10

Introduction

For those familiar with older versions of Windows, the .HLP file format may evoke a sense of nostalgia. Originally developed for Microsoft Windows Help, these files were widely used during the Windows 3.x and Windows 95 eras. However, with the advancement of technology and changes in user interfaces, .HLP files have become less common, and many users on newer Windows platforms, such as Windows 10, find themselves struggling with how to access or read these files.

In this article, we’ll explore what .HLP files are, their historical significance, and most importantly, we’ll provide a detailed guide on how to read and open these files in Windows 10. We will also discuss tools, methods, and alternatives available for users who need to access legacy help content.

Understanding .HLP Files

What are .HLP Files?

.HLP files are Windows Help files that were primarily used in earlier versions of Windows to provide help content to users in a structured format. These files include text, images, and other resources and are typically associated with applications that offered software assistance or documentation. The content of .HLP files is often organized using a hierarchical structure, allowing users to navigate through topics and subtopics.

The Evolution of Help Files in Windows

With the introduction of Windows 95, Microsoft shifted its focus toward a new help system that utilized the .CHM (Compiled HTML Help) format. This provided a more flexible and modern Windows help experience. As a result, the use of .HLP files gradually diminished, and by the time Windows Vista was introduced, Microsoft had discontinued the built-in support for .HLP files altogether.

The introduction of user-friendly web-based help systems has further decreased the relevance of .HLP files. While they still exist in some legacy applications, you may often find yourself with a .HLP file that you need to access on a modern Windows 10 system.

Challenges in Opening .HLP Files on Windows 10

Windows 10 does not natively support .HLP files. When you attempt to open one directly, you may receive an error message or a warning that the file format is outdated. This lack of support can be frustrating for users seeking help or documentation, especially if they are working with legacy software or attempting to recover information from old projects.

How to Read .HLP Files in Windows 10

Despite the challenges posed by the absence of native support for .HLP files in Windows 10, several methods and tools exist that allow users to read these files effectively. Below are the detailed steps for each approach, ensuring that you can access your .HLP content without hassle.

Method 1: Install Legacy HLP Viewer Tools

One of the most straightforward ways to access .HLP files on Windows 10 is to use specialized third-party software that can open and read these legacy help files. Here are a few reliable options:

1. HLP Viewer

   HLP Viewer is a free application designed specifically for opening .HLP files on modern Windows systems. It is straightforward, uncomplicated, and allows users to read legacy help files quickly.

   Steps to Use HLP Viewer:

   • Download HLP Viewer from a trusted source.
   • Install the application by following the on-screen prompts.
   • Once installed, launch HLP Viewer.
   • Use the «Open» option in the menu to navigate to the directory that contains the .HLP file.
   • Select the file and click «OK» to open it.

2. WinHLP32.exe

   Microsoft made the WinHLP32.exe application available for download to provide support for .HLP files on Windows Vista, 7, and 8. Users have reported success using it on Windows 10 as well.

   Steps to Install and Use WinHLP32.exe:

   • Download the appropriate version (32-bit or 64-bit) of WinHLP32.exe for Windows 10 from Microsoft’s official site.
   • After downloading, run the installation by following the prompts.
   • Once installed, double-click on the .HLP file to open it using WinHLP32.exe.

Method 2: Convert .HLP Files to a More Accessible Format

If you often work with .HLP files and want a more convenient long-term solution, you might consider converting them into a more accessible format, like .PDF or .CHM. This way, you can read them without needing specialized software.

1. Use a Conversion Tool

   Various tools are available online to convert .HLP files to HTML or PDF. Some popular choices include:

   • Hlp2Html: This tool converts .HLP files to .HTML format.
   • HLP to PDF Converter: Designed to transform .HLP files directly to PDF format.

   Steps to Use Hlp2Html:

   • Download Hlp2Html from a reputable site.
   • Install the software and launch it.
   • Select the .HLP file you wish to convert.
   • Choose your output format and specify a destination folder.
   • Click “Convert” to process the file.

2. Online Conversion Services

   Alternatively, online services can convert .HLP files without needing to install software. Websites like Zamzar and CloudConvert allow you to upload your .HLP file and convert it to a different format.

   Steps to Use Online Conversion:

   • Navigate to the online conversion website.
   • Upload the .HLP file you want to convert.
   • Choose your desired output format (e.g., PDF, HTML).
   • Click the “Convert” button and wait for the process to complete.
   • Download the converted file to your computer.

Method 3: Running a Virtual Machine

If your work heavily relies on accessing .HLP files, running a virtual machine (VM) with an older version of Windows where the native support for .HLP files exists could be an effective solution.

Steps to Set Up a Virtual Machine:

1. Choose a Virtualization Program: Use software such as Oracle VirtualBox or VMware Workstation.

2. Obtain an Installation ISO: Acquire a copy of an older version of Windows (like Windows XP or Windows 98) as an ISO file.

3. Create a New Virtual Machine:

   • Open your virtualization program.
   • Create a new VM and allocate system resources (CPU, RAM, Disk space).
   • Load the Windows installation ISO into the virtual CD/DVD drive.
   • Follow the prompts to install Windows in the VM.

4. Transfer Your .HLP Files: Use shared folders or USB devices to transfer the .HLP files to your VM.

5. Open – .HLP Files Using Windows Help: Inside the virtual machine, you can now open .HLP files directly, utilizing the original help system.

Additional Considerations

Security Risks with Third-party Tools

While many third-party tools are effective, it is crucial to download software only from trusted sources to minimize the risks of malware or adware. Always run a security scan on the downloaded files and be watchful for any permissions or data collection requests.

Legacy Software Support and Documentation

If you frequently work with older software associated with .HLP files, check if the official documentation from the vendor has been updated to modern formats or if there are newer software alternatives that suit your needs.

Conclusion

Reading .HLP files in Windows 10 might seem challenging at first due to the lack of native support, but multiple methods are available, ranging from using dedicated viewers to conversion tools and virtual machines. Depending on your needs and frequency of working with .HLP files, you can choose the method that suits you best.

While the need for .HLP files is decreasing with each passing year, various legacy applications still rely on them, making it essential for users who engage with such software to remain equipped with the right tools and knowledge. Whether you decide to convert .HLP files or invest time in using a virtual environment, the information detailed in this guide ensures you’ll have the necessary resources to access your legacy help content effectively.