CHM

From MobileRead

CHM stands for Compressed HTML but it is much more than that. It is a container for multiple HTML files and provides a mechanism to rapidly access data in this format. It is largely used for reference documents and Help documents. This is a handy way to keep reference manuals close at hand for easy access. Microsoft includes a CHM Help reader in its Microsoft Windows operating system called hh.exe. When you click on help in a Microsoft application and some 3rd party applications you will find yourself in the CHM Reader. It can also be used directly by providing the CHM file as the argument for the command on a command line or in a shortcut.

CHM has limited Unicode support. For best results, one file should not contain multiple languages.

Contents 1 Exploded .chm 2 Running HH on Windows 3 CHM Readers for other platforms 4 For more information

Exploded .chm

For those using Windows, you can use the free chm --> html tool provided by Microsoft, as follows:

 C:\> hh -decompile Destdir Source.chm

Then proceed from there, by manually editing/converting any .hhc to resemble an index/TOC.

Running HH on Windows

The following files are needed to use the HH command.

HH.EXE         (Windows or WinNT directory)
HHCTRL.OCX     (System or System32 directory)
ITSS.DLL       (System or System32 directory)
ITIRCL.DLL    (System or System32 directory)

CHM Readers for other platforms

For Unix (Linux/MacOS X) users there is the open source

• chmlib
• xchm - A gui front end for chmlib.

For Windows Mobile

• Microolap chmreader
• CHMReader from codeproject.com - free.

FBReader has chm support but generally works best with small files.

For more information

• http://www.russotto.net/chm/ - contains technical details and other data on the CHM or Microsoft help files.