After creating your Jelp booklet, you can display it by clicking View Booklet in the JelpPublisher or by entering the following command at the command prompt:

java com.createsoft.jelp.viewer.Jelp
Figure 3 shows the JelpViewer and topics for the iMaven project.


Figure 3. The JelpViewer with sample topics.

When reviewing the topics in your booklet, you'll notice all the shortcomings and bugs of Jelp (and Java). You can fix most of the nuances and quirks in your Jelp system by modifying your original RTF files, recompiling, and then reconverting. The main bugs that I noticed related with styles and fonts, punctuation marks and symbols, tables, mid-topic jumps, and text highlighting. These issues are discussed below.

Styles and fonts. The Jelp bug list states that the product, at this time, does not support styles such as Heading 1 and Heading 2. The fonts for these styles sometimes do not transfer over at the same size. With the exception of my Bullet List style and about five or six of my headings, all styles converted correctly. To fix my bullet problem, I simply referenced each bullet (bullet.bmp). This bullet problem should be fixed with the latest release. To fix my heading problem, I first tried to manually apply the font style as the Jelp documentation recommends. This ended up making things worse. Although the Windows standard is to use a Heading 1 style (with a non-scrolling region) for main windows and a Heading 2 style for secondary windows, I had better luck using my Heading 1 style with all major headings, including the headings for secondary windows.

Punctuation marks and symbols. In Jelp, apostrophes and hyphens don't convert correctly. For example, "haven't," "you'll," or "Carrier – Add" converts to "havent," "youll" and "Carrier Add." I learned to live with the hyphen problem, but fixed the apostrophe bug by writing out all my contractions. Another quirk, not mentioned in the Jelp documentation, is if your topic IDs contain question marks or colons, the topic won't convert. So if you have a topic ID like "Startup/Shutdown:_Devices_Tab" or "What_Is_a_Component?" then you will need remove these marks from the IDs using your help authoring tool.

Tables. Jelp 2.0 supports tables, and on the iMaven project all my tables converted just fine. However, any text immediately following the table would not display. CreativeSoft has told me that this problem should be fixed with their latest release.

Mid-topic jumps. In my glossaries, the bitmaps that I used for mid-topic jumps (A-Z buttons) did not work after the conversion. The buttons converted fine, but the jumps were no longer functioning.

Text highlighting. Jelp is very sensitive when you click on a jump or popup topic. Often, additional words and sentences around the topic are highlighted. Furthermore, when you click on a jump or popup term, the response time is a little slow.