Doc-to-Help projects may contain two types of documents:

•      Multiple-Topic documents

Multiple-topic documents have an internal hierarchy determined by the styles used in the document. They should start with a "Heading 1" title, followed by other headings and body text. Each paragraph formatted with a heading is displayed as a separate topic in the help system.

Multi-topic documents are always at the top level in the project hierarchy. They cannot be moved to deeper levels.

•      Single-Topic documents

Single-topic documents have no internal hierarchy. Each file is displayed as a single topic in the help system.

The position and hierarchy of the topic within the project is determined by its position in document tree and by the style assigned to the document in the project (the styles actually used in single-topic documents do not affect the structure of the help system, only the appearance of the topic).

For additional information, see Single and Multiple Topic Documents.

Changing a document from single to multi topic (or vice versa) is easy, but it affects the overall structure of the help system. So it is a good idea to plan the project structure before you start adding content to the documents.

The decision between using single and multi-topic documents is up to you. If you prefer to work with a few large documents, and the structure of the help system is relatively static, multi-topic documents are better. If you prefer to work with small files and to manage the structure of the help system from Doc-to-Help, then single-topic documents are a better choice.

You may combine single and multi-topic documents in a single project to get the best of both worlds. That is the approach we will take here.

Now let's add some content to our project. Instead of actually writing each topic, copy all of the HTML files from the tutorial folder into the new project folder.

•      Copy all HTML files from the tutorial folder (c:\Program Files\ComponentOne\DocToHelp\Tutorial\ScubaDive\HTMLDocuments) to the project folder (c:\Guided Tour\HTMLDocuments). Replace any existing files.

The files you just copied contain enough content to get the help system started. We will enhance them later with additional formatting, images, links, and more.