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I wondering whether there are some starting of templates for Apple help book.

As I am not a professional programmer, however, I have come across making apple help book. First of all, I was surprised by the apple help documentation quality. The author of Jekyll Apple Help called it Byzantine which was exactly my first impression. However, I was able to learn the basic concept.

When I have checked the way how Apple does tutorials for their applications I have realised that they use only simple HTML files without any JS and CSS.

So the question is:

How to do it like Apple? Is it something which magically happens in apple help viewer? Is there some hidden way how the styles and scripts are linked elsewhere? If this is something which has to made manually

If I have to take care of JS and CSS – how to do that? Is it something which has to be programmed in x-code? Or eventually, can somebody provide us with a documented help book template?

Filip Zajac
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1 Answers1

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Apple does use Javascript. And a lot of it. For example if you look into their Pages.app help bundle you'll find at least 3 javascript files. It seems that these javascript files take care of loading and displaying the HTML files. So you won't find any javascript inside those.

Having said that, you don't actually need to use javascript unless you want the TOC button on the HelpViewer window to work. If you do, the Jekyll Apple Help project you mentioned already has the javascript required to make this work.

You should file a radar asking for updated documentation and sample code. I certainly did so when I was building my app's help book.

pfandrade
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  • Thanks for sharing insight. – Filip Zajac Feb 19 '18 at 17:55
  • So would you recommend to go just with Jekyll Apple Help? What means "file a radar asking for updated documentation and sample code"? – Filip Zajac Feb 19 '18 at 18:09
  • Yes, I would just go with Jekyll Apple Help. Filling a radar is pretty much the only way developers have to communicate with Apple. You can file a radar at http://radar.apple.com – pfandrade Feb 20 '18 at 18:54