Hello,

I'm not quite sure this is the right place to post this, but there wasn't a better forum in my opinion for this to go in, so just let me know if it's in the wrong place.

So, my problem is this;
I'm about to release a program I've been working on, but before I do, I want to make a help file to attach to it for documentation for it.
So, I've been looking around, and found that .hlp files, that you usually see in programs are Windows only and cost money to make anyway, .doc are also Windows specific unless the end-user has OpenOffice or something similiar installed, and the same goes for .pdfs. And .txt can't use images, of course.

My general needs are:
-Cross-platform without additional software.
-Image support.
-Free.


Any good suggestions on what I can do?
Also, I'm not really too strong on knowledge about other systems, what file formats CAN be used outside of Windows at all?

This might be a very simple question, but it'd help me alot if you guys could give me a hand with it.
Thanks =)

Easiest is to have plain text files but you say you want images so that will not work unless ASCII-art is enough ;)
Otherwise pdf-files are pretty good. There are many programs that can view pdf-files and it is easy to create pdf's, at least in OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
Most users nowadays have a web browser so html files could work too.

I think the best solution would be to host the help files on your website, if you have to make any changes it will be globally changed.
And it would be much easier to drop a new language help file to your website than to release another revision of your game just for new language localization on a help file =p

Thanks for the suggestions guys, HTML would be a great solution.

And thanks Yewbie, that would probably be the best idea. =)