Progress
Help Development
Guide
Creating a Project File with Help Workshop
This section provides an orientation to creating help project files with Help Workshop by describing the elements unique to the project file window. This section also illustrates the project file window by showing you the full text of the Procedure Editor project file as it appears in Help Workshop.
Help Workshop
, \Program Files\Progress\bin\hcw.exe,
is supplied with Progress. It is a utility for creating help contents files and help project files, and for running the help compiler,\Program Files\Progress\bin\hcrtf.exe
.For complete reference information on all aspects of online help development including compiler notes, warnings, and error messages, see the Help Author’s Guide , an online help file,
hcw.hlp
,that accompanies the Help Workshop. The Help Author’s Guide also includes a detailed description of the menu bar and tool bar of Help Workshop.The project file window and all the dialog boxes associated with it use field-level help. Click in any field and press F1 to see the help text for that field.
The project file window displays two text areas and a vertically arranged set of buttons. (Refer to Figure 4–3 for the placement of these elements.) The small text area, labeled Help File, displays the directory pathname and file name to use for the compiled help file. You can edit this text area directly, or on the Files tab of the Options dialog box, as described below.
The large text area displays the text of the project file. As you create new project file entries using the dialog boxes associated with the project file window buttons, Help Workshop inserts them into this display area. If you want to edit an existing entry, you can double-click on it in this display area, and Help Workshop will launch the appropriate dialog box (with the correct tab on top, where applicable).
The remainder of this section lists the buttons that appear in the project file window and describes the dialog boxes they launch:
- Options — Launches the Options dialog box, consisting of a number of tabbed pages. Note that not all of the entries you make in the Options dialog box end up in the [OPTIONS] section of the project file.
- Files — Launches the Topic Files dialog box, which allows you to specify the
.rtf
files that contain the help topics for the project.- Windows — Launches the Window Properties dialog box, consisting of a number of tabbed pages that allow you to create and set properties for all the window types required for your project. Defining window types in the Window Properties dialog box is very convenient and straightforward compared to defining window types in a text editor.
- Bitmaps — Launches the Bitmap Folders dialog box, which allows you to specify a folder (directory), other than the project file’s directory, where you have stored graphics files.
- Map — Launches the Map dialog box, which allows you to create entries mapping topic IDs to context IDs for context-sensitive calls into the help file. Note that if you want to use an #include statement to reference an external file containing context mappings, you cannot do this using Help Workshop. You have to insert an #include statement manually, using a text editor.
- Alias — Launches the Topic ID Alias dialog box, which allows you to create topic ID aliases.
- Config — Launches the Configuration Macros dialog box, which allows you to specify macros that run whenever a user opens a help file. For example, if you wanted to add optional buttons or menu items for the main window, you would enter the appropriate macros here.
- Data Files — Launches the Files Used by Help DLLs dialog box, which allows you to specify the names of author-created DLLs that serve to extend the help engine’s internal macro set.
- Save and Compile — This is the only button of this group of buttons that does not launch a dialog box. The Compile button on the tool bar, however, does launch the Compile a Help File dialog box, which allows you to set several options that affect the behavior of Help Workshop during the compilation.
Figure 4–3 shows the Procedure Editor help project file as it appears in Help Workshop.
Figure 4–3: Help Project File in Help Workshop
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