How to add a help book to a macOS app using Xcode 10.3

Some comments on the web say don't add a .help suffix. Is that so?


All the existing documentation and comments appear to be out of date. So, how to do it with xcode 10.3?


Thanks

Replies

I wouldn't bother. Apple appears to have silently deprecated the help system. Some important features, on the user side, not the developer side, don't work at all on any version of Mojave.

I have finally open-sourced my drop-in replacement for Apple's help system. The URL is github.com/etresoft/ESHelp


It offers the following improvements over Apple's system:

  1. Dark mode support.
  2. Anchors work every time.
  3. This is an app window rather than a system window. When your app quits, the help window closes too.
  4. Searches in your app will only display help in your app. You won’t get results from potentially competing apps.
  5. The search field in the menu bar will work as you expect and display help results in the same window.
  6. Since the help bundle is a valid help bundle, your app’s help will be available via search from the system help tool.
  7. If you need to debug your appearance, everything works great in debug mode.
  8. The sidebar button is replaced with a home button to quickly jump back to the top level of help from an anchor, saving a trip to the menu.
  9. The share button is functional. Apple’s share services don't work with web archives, so the only thing I can share is the URL. It works, but there is no CSS so it isn't pretty. The share button is disabled by default.