Re: World book software?

I would compose the pages in html or rtf and then use one of the various
free packages available for the purpose to convert them to windows help
files. That automatically gets you a topic list (each page is a seperate
subject) and a fully-searchable index.

I've been looking at doing the same thing for my campaign and that's the
best answer I've been able to come up with. As for which software to use to
do this - that being the main point of the question - I can't help out. I
have downloaded two packages (but I'm not sure from where) - HelpExpert
(copyright www.calcom.de which may or may not be a valid link) and RTF2HLP
(copyright http://www.ariacom.com - same caveat). Of the two, RTF2Help
sounds the more useful, HelpExpert sounds the more user-friendly. There are
other packages out there that do the same, but these two are freeware.

Mike Bourke


"Rusty Wallace" <jrustyw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gjk5u1dtjo4gq4sub9np9gh5cvo58plslo@xxxxxxxxxx
I've tried databases, spreadsheets, text documents and offline wiki's
with varying degrees of success. The wikis I have tried come the
closest to what I'm looking for but are kind of a pain to really keep
up and offer little in the way of reporting and such. It's no good to
have a complex wiki database and be unable to render it to a readily
printable and usable form.

I want to build what is essentially an encyclopedia for my campaign
that I can use to keep track of all the various bits and pieces. I
want it to automatically recognize terms that have entries and hot
link back to the main entry. For bonus points the main entry should
have a list of links that go to other entries that reference the
current entry. Super bonus points if I can flag entries
public/private and so produce a fact book that the players can have. I
should be able to easily print the whole thing out as a book in
alphabetical order with full indexing that will reference the
appropriate page number in the document. Ideally I should be able to
embed my timeline into this encyclopedia so that once I've entered
notes for a session it will fit in just like any other entry. I
should be able to grab a term that doesn't currently have an entry and
with a couple of clicks create a new entry. I don't insist on all the
indexing and cross referencing being maintained in real time. I'm
happy to periodically issue a command to rebuild those items.

There must be tools out there for doing this sort of thing. It's
basically technical documentation for a roleplaying game with
convenient hotlinks to ease the writing/editing process.

Anyone know of a software package that does a sizable subset of the
above and doesn't cost a fortune?


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