Help Object Library: 3.4 Customizing Help: Managing Help Types

 HelpType,  ATTR_GEN_HELP_TYPE,  MSG_META_GET_HELP_TYPE

The brand of help your application provides is defined by its HelpType . This value is set in the HelpControl object's HCI_helpType instance field. For normal help, you don't need to set anything; the type will automatically be HT_SYSTEM_HELP for the system help object (you should not set this type for your own help control objects).

There are five other help types you can use: HT_NORMAL_HELP, HT_FIRST_AID, HT_STATUS_HELP, HT_SIMPLE_HELP, and HT_SYSTEM_MODAL_HELP. You should only explicitly use HT_NORMAL_HELP if you want the normal help setup with some customizations or you are creating a viewer application. The others you must use explicitly if you want to provide those types of help.

(Note: HT_SYSTEM_MODAL_HELP is used for providing help within system-modal dialog boxes only. It is rare that an application will ever use system-modal dialog boxes, but if yours does and you need to provide help within it, use this special type. Such dialog boxes should be given the attribute ATTR_GEN_HELP_TYPE with this type to distinguish them from other dialogs.)

To set an application's help type, you have to first supply a HelpControl object as a child of the GenApplication and set its HCI_helpType field to the proper help type. You also have to put your HelpControl object on the GenApplication's GAGCNLT_NOTIFY_HELP_CONTEXT_CHANGE GCN list. You may have one HelpControl object for each help type supported by your application.

Examples of how to set up the proper objects are shown above in Adding Help Controllers .

Any object may have any help type associated with it. You could have, for example, one dialog box set to Normal Help and another set for Simple Help. This is unusual, and you will usually want to stick to a single help type within one application. To set an object's help type, use ATTR_GEN_HELP_TYPE . You can retrieve the current help type of an object by sending it MSG_META_GET_HELP_TYPE .

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