Project Settings
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There are six tabs on Project Settings, "General", "Html Settings", "Background Colors", "Translations",  "Folder Paths" and "Context Strings".


General

Save all changes without asking?

If this is checked then you will no longer be asked to save changes to a page.


If you want to set this Project as a Right-to-Left Project, check the "Right-to-left" option.


The option "Save WinHelp Project file as Unicode" is unchecked by default. If you use unicode and compile for WinHelp, then please check this option.


Add the Popup Title to the Help Text of new Popups

When checked, it will do exactly that. It will also use the last used template for its formatting.


Show WinHelp Options Under Vista

Vista does not support WinHelp, and although you can compile your Project to WinHelp, you will not be able to view the resulting HLP file under Vista. So by default, this option is unchecked. Checking it will reveal all the WinHelp options.


Show Status Images in the Contents

When checked, you can see small images next to each contents entry. These images represent the status of each page. You can customize these images in the Status Images screen.


Enable Live Spelling

When checked, whenever you make a change to your help text in the editor, Fast-Help will automatically spell-check the words as you type and underline any misspelled words with a red squiggly underline. If you do not want to use this feature, then simply uncheck this option


Set the editor to use Unicode Only

If this option is checked then the editor will default to Unicode only, and all pasted text will be converted to Unicode. This option is ideally suited to Eastern languages.


Use advanced Unicode keyboard editing

When the editor is set to Unicode only, this option changes how the keyboard characters are translated. When unchecked, all keystrokes are translated using the current regional settings. When checked, your keystrokes will not be intercepted. Use this option if your particular keyboard layout is not appearing correctly within the editor.


Show the Tasks tab

When checked, the "Tasks" tab will appear to the right of the "Translations" or "Index" tab, depending on what version of Fast-Help you have.


Language of the User Interface

Choose the language that you want to use Fast-Help in. Your selection will affect only how you view and use Fast-Help, the chosen language does not affect the compile settings. To affect the language of the compiled version you can set the International settings in the "HtmlHelp Compiler Options" screen.


Auto Save Restore Points

Here you can specify how many Restore Points this project should have, from 0 to 999.


Last used HelpIDs: The next time you add a new contents entry it will add 1 to this number and assign the HelpID to it. HelpIDs are used by external applications like Visual Basic, C++ and Delphi, etc.


Last used Popup HelpID: Topics and Popup HelpIDs are kept in a different range. You should not have to change these values, but you can if you wish.


Wait for Delayed Writes on Network

If your network uses replication or has delayed writes on the network, then you may want to slow down the compile process to wait for those delayed writes to complete. If you are experiencing problems where the compiled output is missing help text then try setting this value to 1 or 2 seconds. The default value is zero and most people will never need this changed. Only change this setting if you have a very slow network or use delayed writes or replication.



Html Settings

The default html extension in Fast-Help is ".html", but you can change it here to something else.


"Save Lists/Bullets using Inline Styles" - bulleted and numbered lists are saved as normal html lists, but if this option is checked then lists will be saved using inline CSS styles. This option is of benefit to customers who have customized lists. Customized lists will compile perfectly in all documentation options, but because of the limitations of Html, support for them in Html is poor. Using this option though, if you use long lines of text for each list item, these lines of text will not be perfectly indented below the list image, but will be slightly offset.


When a html page is opened on its own, the Website Framework, i.e. the Contents, Search and Index are automatically loaded around it. To disable this behavior uncheck the "Force Website Help pages to display within the Website Framework" option.


Convert known diactric accents to Html equivalent

Certain languages such as Thai, use special accents on characters. HtmlHelp and Website help do not show these characters correctly and so they must use the Html equivalent. When this option is checked, the compiler will convert any known diactric accents into their Html equivalent codes. Do not choose this option for Japanese.


You can set a background image for all pages by selecting it here.



Background Colors

This tab allows you to change the Background colors of the Nonscroll (Header) region and the Scroll (help text) region. Any changes here will be reflected immediately and you will see the backgrounds change within Fast-Help. This option is equivalent to changing the background colors of the WinHelp or HtmlHelp "Main" window.



Translations

This tab is only for Fast-Help International use. It controls the format for importing and exporting strings. You can import a text file containing strings, but the text file needs to be saved as a UTF-8 Unicode file. You can do this in Notepad by selecting "File | Save As" and in the Encoding field, select "UTF-8". The default import format is:

  [STRING_ID]=[STRING]

What this means is that if you have a unicode text file that looks like this:-


Then the string on the left of the equals sign will become the StringID and the string on the right of the equals sign will become the string to be translated.


Set the editor to use Unicode Only

If this option is checked then the editor will default to Unicode only, and all pasted text will be converted to Unicode. This option is ideally suited to Eastern languages. You do not need to use this option if you are only editing in English, or any other Western language.



Folder Paths

Each time you create a new project, Fast-Help will prompt you to create it in the "Fast-Help Projects Folder". This folder is also used to store temporary files during compiling and the HelpSettings.ini file. If you want to store these files in another location then you can choose the new folder here.


You may wish to store your Templates in a shared folder so that other users can access them, and perhaps for the convenience of centralized backups. If you change the Templates folder, as soon as you click the OK button, the contents of your Templates folders will be copied to the new location.



Context Strings

A ContextString is a unique identifier for each page. It can consist of only letters and numbers and some limited characters such as a hyphen and underscore. Fast-Help automatically creates the ContextString each time you add a new page. In doing this, it automatically removes spaces and gives an uppercase character to the first character of each word. If you do not like how the Context Strings are automatically created then you can control how they are created here.


In the "Replace with Spaces" section you can choose between removing the space altogether or replacing it with a "-" or "_". You can also convert the whole ContextString to Upper or Lower case. And the final option is to add your own prefix. This is useful if you are integrating your help file into an application where there are certain syntax rules. For example, some C++ programmers use "IDS_" to prefix strings.