Progress
Help Development
Guide
Help Strings
A help string is a string that appears in the status bar of a window and describes the function of the field-level widget that has input focus. Help strings are a good way to provide cursory information about a database field or a field-level widget in your application. You define help strings for database fields in the field schema (using the Data Dictionary) and for field-level widgets in the appropriate property sheet (using the AppBuilder), or in 4GL code written in the Procedure Editor.
Progress provides the ability to associate help strings with database fields and those field-level widgets that can receive input focus. Help strings are easy to implement and produce a first line of help for your application. When you tab through certain field-level widgets (fill-in fields, buttons, combo boxes, selection lists, editors, toggle boxes, radio sets, and sliders) on an application interface, Progress displays a help string in the status area of the current window or screen as shown in Figure 1–1.
Figure 1–1: Help String for a Field-level Widget
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A status area is an optional feature of a Progress application window that displays one line of message text at the bottom of the window. Its appearance is controlled by the STATUS-AREA attribute. Thus, if the STATUS-AREA is disabled on a window, no help message will appear. While a dialog box does not have a status area, help strings defined for fields on a dialog box are displayed in the status area of its parent window.
There are three methods for creating help strings:
The next three sections discuss these methods for creating help strings.
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