The first thing you have to decide before you can create any Help topics is which word processor or text editor you are going to use. The primary requirement is that it must support rich-text format (RTF). RTF is the standard Word document exchange format that Microsoft Word applications use to convert formatted documents into a set of instructions that other applications can read and interpret. Most commonly, RTF is used to transfer Word documents between Macintosh and PC platforms or across communications networks. RTF file format consists of text intermixed with RTF statements that control document, paragraph, and character formatting. For a full description of the RTF file format accepted by th Help computer, see Appendix B, “Help RTF Statements.”
However, because the Windows Help compiler only supports topic files that have been saved in RTF, choosing the right word processor is critical to your online Help project. Although you can use any word processor or text editor that has an option to save files as RTF or that has some other means for converting its native format to RTF, the files it produces may not be fully compatible with the Help compiler. That is because some word processors and conversion utilities produce RTF that can be interpreted correctly by other word processors but cannot be interpreted correctly by the Help compiler because they use nonstandard techniques. For that reason, we strongly recommend that you use Word for Windows version 1.1 or 2.0.
Note:
If you use Microsoft Word for the Macintosh to create topic files, we recommend using version 4.0b or later.