which format to use for software user manual/help/documentation

Question

My requirements are:

• easy tools exist to create/format the help file
• from our software, we can launch the help file at a certain location, specified ideally by keyword or tag and not by page number.
• to be deployed with a Windows software.

Thanks!

Answer 1

One thing that came to mind is a Wiki-style markdown format for the help file. If you want to allow easy editability in a variety of tools, I think plain text, or a simple markdown format is a good way to go. Even if people don't understand or want to learn the full markdown format, they can usually get by with "*"s for bullet points, etc.

I believe there are some markdown libraries available for .NET, although I haven't tried any.