There are two ways of controlling Fast-Help from the Command Line. The first is through passing simple commands, such as which Project to open and whether to compile to a specific format. This is available in all versions of Fast-Help. The second way is to pass an ini file, containing advanced commands. This way is available only in the Corporate Edition.

Simple Command Line Compiles

Fast-Help takes 3 parameters from the command line, the first is the Project name, the second is an optional compile command and the third is an optional request to keep Fast-Help open.

1st Parameter: Project Name - Type in the full path to the project, i.e:

  FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb"

2nd Parameter: Compile option - This is optional. Type in the parameter "-compile=" followed by the format to compile, examples are:

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=HtmlHelp

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=WinHelp

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=RTF

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=Printable

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=PDF

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=PocketPC

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=WebSite

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=wxWidgets

3rd Parameter: -StayOpen - this is optional and if omitted then FastHelp will close after compiling. It this is included FastHelp will remain open. i.e.

FastHelp.exe "C:\Test\My Project.mdb" -compile=HtmlHelp -StayOpen

Advanced Command Line Compiles Using ini files

Please note this option is available only in the Corporate Edition. In the Templates folder you will find a file called "Command Line Compiles.ini". You can use this as the basis for your own command line compiles. For example, if you want to compile a Project called "Acme Products.mdb", for two different customers, you could save the ini file as "For Microsoft.ini" and "For All Others.ini". You can save the ini files wherever you like, but it is probably best to save them into the same folder as your Project. For example, if you saved your ini files into your Project folder, which was "C:\My Projects\Acme Products 2006", your command line would look like this:

  "C:\Program Files\FastHelp\FastHelp.exe" "C:\My Projects\Acme Products 2006\For All Others.ini"

Fast-Help will then load and read in the ini file and process all the commands within it. The most basic command tells Fast-Help the name of your Project to load. Below you can see that the first section in the ini file is the [Project] section. The command "ProjectFileName" specifies the Project. This needs to be a full path, as per the screenshot below.

If you were to just pass this ini file to Fast-Help, your Project would be loaded and then Fast-Help would close. So effectively it would not do anything useful, so we need to tell it what format to compile to. This brings us to the next important section, the [Compile Options], which contains the following two important commands:

  CloseAfterCompile=Y

  FormatToCompileTo=htmlhelp

The CloseAfterCompile command is either "Y" or "N". If you do not specify it, Fast-Help will simply close after compiling. To force Fast-Help to stay open, set this command to "N". The FormatToCompileTo command takes the following options:

  winhelp

  htmlhelp

  website

  rtf

  pdf

  pocketpc

  wxwidgets

So, if you have an ini file like the screenshot below:

It will load your Project and compile it to HtmlHelp and then close.

Multiple Compiles

You can compile to more than one format in the same ini file. For example, you may want to compile to HtmlHelp and PDF using the same options. The following options allow you to compile a up to 7 different compile formats:

  SecondCompile=pdf

  ThirdCompile=pocketpc

  FourthCompile=rtf

  FifthCompile=wxwidgets

  SixthCompile=website

  SeventhCompile=winhelp

You only need to specify the options that you need for the current ini file. For example, to compile to HtmlHelp and PDF, your [Compile Options] would look like this:

  [Compile Options]

  FormatToCompileTo=htmlhelp

  SecondCompile=pdf

Each compile will complete in the sequence it is listed, up to the SeventhCompile option.

Setting Variables

Let's say that we have two Variables called "Company Name" and "Copyright". If we are compiling using our "For All Others.ini" file, we may want to set these variables to different values than we perhaps would want for the "For Microsoft.ini" file. To set the variables, we use the [Variables] section. Type the variable name, without the square brackets and leading $ sign. Then add the equals sign, and the text to replace the variable with, as per the screenshot below:

Please note that setting variables in this way will set the variable to "Plain Text only", i.e, the variable will take on the formatting of the surrounding help text.

I am sure you can see how powerful this can be - you can have many ini files with groups of variables customized for specific customers or users.

Setting Conditions

Let's say you have two Conditions called "NOT YET LIVE" and "For Microsoft Only". In the [Conditions] section you simply type the Condition name followed by the equals sign and either a "Y" for include or a "N" to exclude. See the screenshot below for an example:

Excluding Topics or Popups

There may be occasions where you want to exclude topic or popup pages that are specific to a Customer. There are two sections to handle this, [ExcludeTopics] and [ExcludePopups]. These sections require the use of the ContextString of the page to identify it. For example, if you have a page with a Title of "Welcome to Acme v1.0", if you click on the Properties tab you will see a ContextString that looks like "WelcomeToAcmeV10". The ContextString is a unique identifier for the page. In the screenshot below, the topic "WelcomeToAcmeV10" will be excluded from the next compile, and the topic "Introduction" will be included. Also, the popup "WhatIsAFilter" will be included.

Translations

There are two options that affect Translations, the LanguageToLoad and whether you are compiling a translation or not. This section looks like this below:

  [Translations]

  LanguageToLoad=Korean

  CompileTranslation=Y

In this case above we are loading an existing translation, "Korean", and we will be compiling the translation, because it is set to "Y".

HtmlHelp Specific Options

From the ini file, you can set all the same options that you can on the interactive Compile screen. None of these options are required. They simply allow you to change the settings that you see on the compile screen. If you do not want to make any changes to the settings you see when you are using Fast-Help interactively, then you can omit all the following sections.

One handy option below is to specify a different file name to compile to. In the example screenshot below the FileName is set to Acme General. Note that the CHM file extension is not used. This will be added automatically by Fast-Help.

You can also specify a destination for the compiled CHM file to be copied to, using the "CopyFileTo" option. The rest of the options in all the sections below are the same ones that you see on the compile screen. Setting them equal to "Y" is the same as checking an option, and un-checking an option is equivalent to setting it to "N".

WinHelp Specific Options

Website Specific Options

RTF Specific Options

PDF Specific Options

PocketPC Specific Options

wxWidgets Specific Options

Commenting Out Lines

If you want to add notes to the ini file, for your own purposes, just precede the line with a semi-colon. Fast-Help will ignore all lines that begin with a semi-colon. This option is called "commenting out lines". You can also use it to temporarily ignore some lines that you enable or disable. For example, if you have an entry such as this:

  [Variables]

  PhoneNumber=555-123-456

You might want to change it to a new number temporarily and then change it back later, so it may be more convenient to do the following:

  [Variables]

  ;PhoneNumber=555-123-456

  PhoneNumber=272-938-010