Introduction to Help Writer 2016
Help Writer 2016 is a help authoring tool for software developers. It not only is an editor to create the help files but it also is a system for .Net developers to deliver their help files. It comes with dlls for Desktop and Windows store deployment.
You can use the project files themselves or for desktop deployment, you can create a dll that contains your help documentation. It typically is only 5kb large. You would need to deploy the help system dll and your help file if you choose that.
Help Writer began around 2003 when I started writing the first edition so that I could write help files for my software. The cheapest tool at the time was around $100 and I didn't want to spend that much. And I wasn't interested in writing with the near useless editor that Microsoft included with their compiler. So I wrote a program that created a nice project file. And then teamed with a free full fledged editor developer to include it with my program as a separate application.
Over time, I did not like how the program had to rely on an external editor and decided to write my own editor control and incorporate that into the program. I did that and used the program to write my documentation. But I never released it.
I never was satisfied the editor was working correctly enough to be released. Now after rewrting everything with wpf, I have decided to release it.