The Visual Studio 11 (VS 2012) Help Viewer is pretty cool and you can use it to view your own catalogs if you register them first. Note that Windows 8 help uses a different proprietary viewer. We have no details on using that viewer. Location & Command Line ArgsC:\Program Files\Microsoft Help Viewer\v2.0\HlpViewer.exeUse the /? or /help command line argument to see all command line arguments. Microsoft(R) Help Viewer 2.0Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.Description: Runs the Help Viewer application to view or manage documentation.Usage: HlpViewer.exe /catalogName <catalog name> [/options]Example: HlpViewer.exe /catalogName VisualStudio11 /locale en-us /launchingApp Microsoft,VisualStudio,11.0Required parameter:/catalogName <catalog name> Specifies the product documentation catalog to view and manage.Options:/locale <language-country/region> Specifies the culture name (language and country/region) of the product documentation to view and manage; for example, specify /locale pt-br for Portuguese (Brazil)./launchingApp <company,product,version> Specifies application-specific data that defines the registry key for looking up product-specific settings./sku <ID> Filters the booklist for the specified SKU ID./manage Displays the Manage Content tab when the application starts./helpQuery <ms-xhelp query> Executes a query to display specific content./? or /help Displays usage information./catalogName <catalog name>Require parameter. HlpViewer.exe can only view catalogs that are registered under a catalog name (see Catalogs). /locale <locale>Optional. A catalog can contain one or more locales (language versions of a help catalog). If you omit this parameter the closest help locale will be loaded. /launchingApp <company, product, version>Optional. Specifies application-specific data that defines the registry key for looking up product-specific settings. You will notice when you launch Help from VS 11 the help Window has the same visual theme as VS 11. This is part of job of this switch. ??? We will try and find out more info on this.Also, looking at the help source, if arg = "Microsoft,VisualStudio,11.0" then hlpViewer starts MS sqmRecorder. /sku <ID>Optional. Currently only used by Microsoft Visual Studio to help populate the Manage Content tab according to the edition of Visual Studio. (eg Ultimate = 3000; Express = 1000 etc ). /manageOptional. Open Help Viewer at the Manage Content tab. /helpQuery <ms-xhelp query>Optional. Run a help query. For example open a topic via F1 keyword. This is what VS uses when your press F1 help. See below for more info. Undocumented: /Vendor <vendor name>Optional. A tie-breaker. Vendor name is defined at merge time in the .msha manifest file. eg. /Vendor Microsoft /ProductName <product name>Optional. A tie-breaker. Product name is defined in a topic by meta tag MICROSOFT.HELP.PRODUCT. Registering a CatalogSee example "Creating a Catalog" in Catalogs /HelpQuery ParameterIf you press F1 in VS 11 then use Windows 7 Task manager to view the command line arguments used to open HlpViewer.exe you will see something like this: HelpViewer.exe /catalogName VisualStudio11 /helpQuery method=f1&query=VS.TextEditor&LCID=1033&LCID=1033&TargetFrameworkMoniker=.NETFramework,Version%3Dv4.0&DevLang=csharp /locale en-US /sku 3000 /launchingApp Microsoft,VisualStudio,11.0Switches are covered above. Here are some examples of the /helpQuery argument:
The help query may also contain:
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