Finally we ended up implementing a local HTTP server:
- Internal people creates HTML content within our internal network
- Our own build-tool creates the TOC and a search index and packs all content to a zipped file
- The zipped file is packed into the application installation
- When the end-user call help from within our application, the local http server is started
- The HTTP server uses the
HttpListener
class - With this, it is possible to have some HTTP queries for special tasks like starting tools of our application by clicking a link without interception of the browser