Visual Studio Microsoft Help Viewer loading data

Ralph Rose 41 Reputation points
2021-11-14T20:32:20.497+00:00

I still have not learned how to load by Microsoft Help Viewer with data. I think this is because you are make assumptions about the situation. Please answer the specific question. 1) What is the website address my Microsoft Help Viewer is expect to get data from? 2) What is the website address where a user using only a browser can get data on all methods and classes in the assemblies supplied with Visual Studio 2015? 3) The options available for loading data suggest a disk or DVD can be purchased containing this same data. Where and how can this disk or DVD be purchased and what is the order code etc. necessary for making this purchase?

Visual Studio
Visual Studio
A family of Microsoft suites of integrated development tools for building applications for Windows, the web and mobile devices.
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  1. Castorix31 86,971 Reputation points
    2021-11-14T22:30:38.463+00:00

    MS Help Viewer calls HlpCtntMgr.exe wich uses the links from

    https://services.mtps.microsoft.com/ServiceAPI/catalogs/Dev15/en-US

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  2. Ralph Rose 41 Reputation points
    2021-11-15T04:00:54.733+00:00

    I appreciate your answer, but you answered only one of the three questions I asked. Please acknowledge two questions remain so other will answer them as well.


  3. RLWA32 46,941 Reputation points
    2021-11-18T12:33:09.773+00:00

    As the former Program Manager for Help Viewer, I'm astonished that this hasn't been fixed. It appears to be broken for all help catalogs. The fix is simple.

    If you visit the catalog file for any of the help catalogs here:
    https://services.mtps.microsoft.com/ServiceAPI/catalogs

    none of them will work as they are using an invalid format. They should simply be UTF-8 human readable xhtml.

    Following the links for dev14, you'll arrive at this page and see the garbage formatting:
    https://services.mtps.microsoft.com/ServiceAPI/catalogs/dev14/en-us

    The problem is with the extra code (�) beginning in every tag. A quick and dirty workaround for those of us at home is to copy and paste the entire page into an empty DOS/UTF-8 text file. It must be UTF-8. Then do a search and replace for that character replacing with nothing. Rename the file with an .msha extension and point Help Viewer's Library Manager to that .msha file, hit enter and you will see all the 'books' available for download, and it will work as expected.

    So this means that the xhtml files hosted by the ServiceAPI are invalidly formatted. Please fix!

    Paul O'Rear, http://blogs.msdn.com/TheHelpGuy


    Above from now closed msdn forum

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