Make Yourself |
 |
by Raymond P. Woerner |
Providing a Help system with an application gives it a professional quality. Users are impressed when they hit F1 and get meaningful information about a program. They've also come to expect "Help" on all menu bars so they can search for facts about your application.
I'll describe how to create a simple Help system. Some of the files described in this article are available on the HAL-PC BBS. If you plan on doing your first Help system, please download file HELPARTL.ZIP.
Overview
If you want to create a Help system, you'll need to do three things. First, you must write the documentation for the Help system in rich text format (.RTF). Second, you must create a Help project (.HPJ) file giving the help compiler instructions about how to turn the RTF file into a Help file. Third, the Help compiler (HC31.EXE) must successfully compile it.
The RTF file
The RTF file can be created with any word processor that supports rich text format such as MS Word.
You need to know several facts up front. First, each topic in a help file is separated by a page break. Second, information about a Help topic's title, keyword, and context string are supplied to the Help compiler via footnotes. Third, double underlined text and hidden text work together with context string information to allow jumps from one topic to another.
The .HPJ file
The job of the HPJ file is to tell the Help compiler which RTF file to use and what to do with it. Figure 3 shows the HPJ file for this article's Help system.
The [OPTIONS] section tells the compiler where to write errors, the title of the Help system, and which section to use as the contents. The [FILES] section tells the compiler its input file. The [MAP] section relates context strings in the RTF file to context numbers in the Help system. These context numbers are used within applications such as MS Access to provide context-sensitive Help when the user presses F1. The [WINDOWS] section defines the characteristics of the primary Help window such as caption and background color.
Compiling the Help System
The help compiler is HP31.EXE for Windows 3.1. It is usually supplied with developer toolkits and language compilers. Exit to DOS, type "HC31 HELPARTL.HPJ", and press enter. If you don't get any error messages, your Help system is ready for testing.
Testing the Help System
Return to Windows and run "WINHELP.EXE HELPARTL.HLP". The Help system should start up and display the contents screen. You should be able to use all your links and find all the topics using the search function in the Help system.
Other Issues
There are Help authoring tools available which simplify this process. You may want to evaluate them if you write many Help systems.
Ray Woerner, a HAL-PC member.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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