B.1 Interpreting Error Messages

The Microsoft Help Compiler displays either warning or fatal-error messages. A warning message indicates a problem during compilation that was not severe enough to prevent the help file from being created. Microsoft Windows Help should be able to open the file but may encounter problems when displaying some topics. A fatal error indicates a problem that prevents the compiler from creating a help file. The compiler always reports fatal errors, regardless of the current warning level or reporting option.

While the Microsoft Help Compiler processes the project file, it ignores lines that contain errors and attempts to continue. This means that errors encountered early in the file may result in many more errors being reported as the compiler continues.

When the Microsoft Help Compiler processes topic files, it reports any errors it encounters and, if the errors are not fatal, compilation continues. A single error in a topic file may result in more than one error message being displayed by the compiler. For example, a typographic mistake in a topic's context string will cause an error to be reported every time the compiler encounters a reference to the correct topic identifier.