F A R HTML

About Far | Quick Tour
FAR Features | HTML Editor | Explorer TipsCommand-Line Parameters
Uninstalling FAR | Trouble Shooting | Other Notes | See Also


About FAR

FAR is a collection of productivity tools combining advanced find/replace, HTML Help 1.x & MS Help 2.x authoring, FTP, File and ZIP functions in a single interface.

Registration

The FAR download is a full working version. After 4 weeks you will see a registration reminder messages. After 8 weeks you will see timed reminder messages which will make working with FAR difficult. You can dismiss the nag screens and continue working, however at this stage you should either register FAR, or remove FAR from your computer.

Registration of FAR is straight forward. Simply select "Help > Buy FAR" from the main menu or visit our purchase web page.  Pay a small fee and we will send you your registration codes which you then enter via "Help > Register FAR" (see FAR main menu). Each user of FAR must register his or her own copy of FAR. You may not share a copy of FAR unless you have purchased multiple licenses. Site and World licenses for FAR are available if you contact us and negotiate a price.

Unicode

FAR version 5 is now a Unicode application just like Windows is. So now even on an English PC, foreign language characters (French, German, Japanese, Chinese etc) will display and enter correctly within FAR. However please remember that Microsoft HTML Help 1.x is an ANSI technology so do not use Unicode when creating .CHM files.

Read more on Unicode...

Support

See the FAR Home Page for downloads, FAQ and other information:
http://www.helpwaregroup.com/products/far

Can't find a solution to your problem?
Contact us

Get the FAR news letter (recommended). We will email you as each new version of FAR becomes available:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HelpwareFAR
 

Quick Tour

1. How to Create a File List
2. How to Search & Replace
3. How To Create MS Help
 

FAR Features

File Utilities

MS HTML Help 1.x

MS Help 2.x

MS Help 3.x

Uncompressed Help (Web Help)

HTML Editor
FAR doesn't come with a content (HTML) editor. There are plenty of excellent HTML, XML and image editors out there, and FAR will work with them all.

A few tips: Do a Web Search and you will find plently of great free editors to try.
Good Image Editors
Explorer Tips

See also: A full list of Explorer file and folder commands

Note that in later versions of Windows (Win XP SP2, Vista) you need to click the "Open With" menu item. Vendors can no longer customize Explorer file context menus.

FAR Command-Line Parameters
Calling FAR from other programs:

To get FAR to open .HHC, .HHK, .CHM, .ITS etc files via its command-line you need to specify a "/O" parameter then the filename as the second parameter. The /O is required so that FAR can tell that the command line is valid and not just another DDE command send by Explorer's context menus.

Example 1:  To open a file contents.hxt

FAR.EXE /O "c:\my projects\project1\contents.hxt"

Example 2: To create a command button in HomeSite you would:

  1. Specify the program associated with .HHC, .HHK, .HxT, .HxK and .CHM files as being FAR.EXE
  2. Specify a FAR command line parameter of "/O %CURRENT%"

    Note:
    HomeSite uses "%CURRENT%" to represent the full path of the current file. 

Note:  You can also open files in FAR by Shift+Dropping them onto FAR. EG. Drag and drop a .HHP file onto FAR and hold down Shift while releasing the mouse button. Instead of the file appearing in the FAR file list, FAR will open the file in the HHP Project Editor. This method also resolves Windows shortcut items EG. Shift+Drop a Shortcut to a Folder onto FAR, and FAR will load the contents of that folder into the file list. Normally you would simply see a .lnk file appear in the FAR file list.

MS Help Namespace

FAR has a built-in MS Help 2 viewer. To open a MS Help 2 collection, specify a Namespace, prefixed with "ms-help://", as the FAR command-line parameter.

Example 1: To open a help namespace called FRED.

FAR.EXE ms-help://FRED

Example 2: To open namespace MS.VSCC at a particular topic.

FAR.EXE ms-help://MS.VSCC/MS.MSDNVS/dnmsdn/html/msdnres.htm

How to Uninstall FAR

Windows XP

1. Select Control Panel ? Add/Remove Programs.
2. Select "FAR" from the list and click "Add/Remove".

Windows Vista

1. Select Control Panel > Program and Features.
2. Select "FAR" from the list and click "Uninstall/Change".
 

Trouble Shooting

Why does FAR crash sometimes when compiling HTML Help?

The MS HTML Help compiler  (HHA.DLL) can cause access violations when parsing certain HTML files. The following can crash HHA.DLL and kill FAR in the process.

  1. Filenames of the form xxx.hxxx.gif or xxx.hxxx.jpg are interpreted incorrectly as HTML files.
  2. HTML files containing poorly written code. EG. Closing or starting tags are missing.
  3. Control characters left in HTML files.

The only fix at the moment is to modify the files. It sometimes takes a lot of work to track down these bugs.

For more tips see: 
   http://kb.helpwaregroup.com/ms-html-help/hh-faq

 

Other Notes

Shutdown

When closing FAR, the current file list automatically saved (if not empty, and is <= 10000 items, and not already saved to disk), to the file _LastFARList.FAR in the last save folder.

 

Copyright Notices

FAR FTP - Portions of this software are Copyright (c) 1993 - 2003, Chad Z. Hower (Kudzu) and the Indy Pit Crew - http://www.IndyProject.org/


See Also


http://www.HelpwareGroup.com/