15-Minute Reviews :: CHM Editor v1.1

Hello everyone and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is CHM Editor version 1.1 by GridinSoft – An application designed to edit CHM (Windows help files and e-books) in WYSIWYG format and help translate those files quickly.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“CHM Editor is a handy WYSIWYG editor which can be used for editing and translating CHM files. You can translate your e-Books in CHM format easily and quickly.

Besides, this is perfect tool for localization your CHM Help files. You can solve several tasks at once by using CHM Editor:

1. This is a powerful tool for editing CHM, you can change and save chm file directly without downloading any additional tools or editors; 2. It allows you translate any chm-file using one of available translation services.”

Quick Pros

• Built-in translation functionality via Google and Yahoo
• Basic formatting tools (RTF-style) plus image loading

Quick Cons

• Not quite sure the point of ‘Preview’ button if editor is WYSIWYG
• Does not retain any formatting while translating
• No option to create a new CHM file – Ho way to actually manipulate the layout of the CHM file
• If you open another file, it keeps the page you last were working on up on the right pane
• Got a Runtime Error 217 when attempting to open third file (Same file as first)

Expansion

A quiet market, but a common one, is the creation of CHM files. While more and more applications are getting away from the use of CHM and instead using HTML (offline or online) or otherwise for help due to simplicity, many applications still use CHM and many people prefer them for their index and search functionaliry.

This application contains a few useful tools for those who have CHM files already in place and would like to do minor updares or localization. There is built-in translation functionality which pushes what you select through either Google’s or Yahoo’s translation service (No Babelfish?) You simply select the text you want to translate, select your service and language requirements, and hit the non-descript green-and-red refresh button to translate. You may ask why you don’t want to select the entire file or topic; This application does butcher formatting badly (blame the translation services partly.) When translation is done, it formats the results from the translation in the first formatting that was selected, removing any bold, italic, font and size that was elsewhere for the initial font. It also removes carriage returns, so you should select paragraph by paragraph too. It would have been nice for the paragraph portion to at least have sent each paragraph one by one and reassemble the paragraph for you.

There is also basic RTF-style formatting. Font type, color, bold-italic-underline and justify are there. There is also the inclusion of images as well. Handy for cleaning up the formatting after the translation service rolls through.

A few issues I do have with this application. It has no way to help you create a new file, nor is there any way to add/remove/edit topics or categories; It takes the term ‘editor’ literally. You can’t start your own file with this at all, nor any major alterations. It is geared clearly towards the translation service it provides.

When I opened a second CHM file, I noticed that on the right pane remained the last topic I was working on in the previous file. I would assume that it would be cleared so that any confusion may be avoided. I clicked refresh, thinking that may remove the error; That presented me with an Internet Explorer-style ‘Page not found’ window. I messed around a bit with the second file and went to open the first file and it refused to do so, quoting a ‘Runtime Error 217’ error up on screen. It did not load the file either. I closed and reopened the application and it reopened that file fine the second time.

Final Verdict

With no creation of files, or category and topic add/remove/edit functionality, this application should only be thought of as a translation service and for quick file alterations. It is not really useful for much besides localization and quick changes, for sure. This application really needs to work on expanding into a true editor instead of the form it is in. If you are needing translation service and you’ve already built a CHM file, I would recommend simply do it through your current application and run it through Babelfish. You’ll still lose the formatting, but at least you’ll be working in a familiar environment. With the runtime error and the lack of features, I’d recommend steering away from this product until it matures some more, even while free.

An alternative is Visual CHM ($19.95 – WYSIWYG – Gets decent ratings)

Posted by BladedThoth on Saturday, June 02, 2007