[File] [PATCH] Magdir/msdos MS Advisor help; some are missed

[Jörg Jenderek (GMX)]

Hello,

some months ago i migrate to Windows 10. Some days ago i wanted to use
the help of an older Windows program. Now i get an error message that
the used help system is not not supported any more. The same error occur
in my previous Window 8.1 system. The solution offered by Microsoft is
to download installation package with knowledge base KB917607. For
Windows 8.1 i could download a MSU package for my language and CPU
architecture. This could be started by double click. But for Windows 10
no download is offered. I tried the version for Windows 8.1 but when
starting installation Windows complains that package is not suited for
my version.

There exist some obscure tutorial for that issue. But before doing these
items the step before for me is to find the Windows help files on my
computer systems. For the windows help files the name suffix HLP is
used. Unfortunately this suffix is also used for other help systems. So
in first step you want to identify all HLP samples on your systems.
Unfortunately on my systems some HLP files are not identified. So in
this session i will handle HLP samples which are "MS Advisor help"
These are used by Microsoft DOS software programs

When running file command version 5.45 on such examples i get an output
like:

CL.HLP:      data
CLANG.HLP:   data
LINK.HLP:    MS Advisor help file
PWB.HLP:     MS Advisor help file
UTILERR.HLP: MS Advisor help file

For the help samples with --extension option only ??? is displayed.
Furthermore with -i option for samples only generic
application/octet-stream is shown.

For comparison reason i also run the file format identification
utility DROID ( See https://sourceforge.net/projects/droid/). Here these
samples are not recognized.

For comparison reason i run the file format identification utility
TrID ( See https://mark0.net/soft-trid-e.html). All samples are here
described as "Microsoft Advisor Help" by hlp-ms-adv.trid.xml with
generic mime type application/octet-stream (See appended
trid-v-hlp-advisor.txt.gz)

TrID list the used file name extension and often with -v option the
related URL pointing to used file format information.

With the help of these tools i found page on file formats archive team
web site. There also links to samples for download are listed. So these
informations are now expressed inside Magdir/msdos by additional comment
lines like:
# URL:		http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/
#		wiki/Microsoft_Advisor_Help
# Reference:	http://mark0.net/download/triddefs_xml.7z
#		defs/h/hlp-ms-adv.trid.xml

In current Magdir/msdos the description happens by line like:
0	ulequad	0x3a000000024e4c	MS Advisor help file

This is true for many samples, but according to documentation fifth byte
is sometimes 01 instead of 00. So this now becomes like:
0 ulequad&0xFFffFFfeFFffFFff 0x003a000000024e4c	MS Advisor help file
!:mime						application/x-ms-hlp
!:ext						hlp

After applying the above mentioned modifications by patch
file-5.45-msdos-hlp-advisor.diff then now all samples are recognized and
i get output like:

CL.HLP:      MS Advisor help file
CLANG.HLP:   MS Advisor help file
LINK.HLP:    MS Advisor help file
PWB.HLP:     MS Advisor help file
UTILERR.HLP: MS Advisor help file

I hope my diff file can be applied in future version of
file utility.

With best wishes
Jörg Jenderek
--
Jörg Jenderek
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--- file-5.45/magic/Magdir/msdos.old	2023-05-21 18:04:05.000000000 +0200
+++ file-5.45/magic/Magdir/msdos	2023-11-22 00:40:59.256156200 +0100
@@ -1837,3 +1837,9 @@
 # old binary Microsoft (.HLP) files added by Joerg Jenderek from http://file-extension.net/seeker/file_extension_hlp
-0	ulequad	0x3a000000024e4c	MS Advisor help file
+# URL:		http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/Microsoft_Advisor_Help
+# Reference:	http://mark0.net/download/triddefs_xml.7z/defs/h/hlp-ms-adv.trid.xml
+# Note:		called "Microsoft Advisor Help" by TrID
+0	ulequad&0xFFffFFfeFFffFFff	0x003a000000024e4c	MS Advisor help file
+#!:mime								application/octet-stream
+!:mime								application/x-ms-hlp
+!:ext								hlp