Progress
Help Development
Guide
Help Windows
You can define more than one type of help window for a help file. The help engine recognizes two broad categories of window types: main and secondary. By default, there is only one main window and it must have the name, “main.” However, you can use several secondary window types, or none at all, depending on the types of information you need to present in help topics.
It is helpful to think of window types as corresponding to different types of information, so that end users will associate each window type (distinguished by size, location, color scheme, and/or viewer features) with its particular type of information. You should define and use secondary window types sparingly.
All the help files for the Progress ADE tools (including the Procedure Editor help file) use only a main window. In the Progress help files, this main window appears as a relatively large window centered on the screen.
The next two sections present the features of a main window and a secondary window as they might be implemented for the Progress Procedure Editor help system. You can also customize the menus and the buttons that appear in any help window, as well as its size and placement and other properties. You do this through entries in the help project file and by embedding macros in the project file or help source files. See "Completing Help Systems," for a more detailed discussion of the methods for customizing help windows.
The Main Window
Figure 2–4 shows the main window for the Procedure Editor help file. The menus and buttons shown are standard for Windows help and appear in the main window for almost all help files.
Figure 2–4: Main Window for the Procedure Editor Help File
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Table 2–1 summarizes the standard main window menus. Also note that if you right-click anywhere in the help topic display area, a popup menu appears that duplicates some of the commands from the main window menus.
Table 2–2 summarizes the standard main window buttons.
Secondary Windows
Figure 2–5 shows how a secondary window could appear in the Procedure Editor help file. The buttons shown are standard for Windows help and appear in the secondary window for almost all help files.
A secondary window, by definition, does not have a menu bar. However, the Options button that appears in a secondary window displays a popup menu that includes some of the most frequently used commands in the main window’s menus. The Options button in the secondary window performs the same function as right-clicking in the display area of a window.
Secondary windows offer the advantage that a help author can specify that they are “sized to fit.” This type of secondary window sizes itself to fit its content. Also, multiple secondary windows (up to nine) can remain open at the same time.
Figure 2–5: A Secondary Window
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Table 2–3 summarizes the standard secondary window buttons.
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