Progress
Help Development
Guide


Creating Browse Sequences

A browse sequence is a set of related help topics that are meant to be read in a specific order. The user navigates though a browse sequence by clicking the backward (<<) and forward (>>) help window buttons.

For example, in the Procedure Editor help file, when you browse forward from the Procedure Editor Menu Commands help topic displayed in Figure 3–6, the help engine displays the next topic in the browse sequence-the File Menu help topic, displayed in Figure 3–7.

The help information for the Procedure Editor menus is designed as a browse sequence. Each help topic in the browse sequence is assigned a consecutive browse sequence number that specifies where it appears in the sequence. The Editor main menu is assigned the number 000000, the Editor File menu 000005, the Editor Edit menu 000010, and so on. You can define more than one browse sequence in a help file, but an individual help topic can reside in only in one browse sequence.

Figure 3–4 diagrams a browse sequence used in the Procedure Editor help file.

Figure 3–4: Browse Sequence Diagram

A help topic can be assigned to a browse sequence by inserting a sequence name, a colon, and a sequence number in the footnote text following the control code. One space separates the control code (+) and the keyword footnote text. A help topic can be assigned to no more than one browse sequence:

+ editmenu:000000 

Assigning Browse Sequence Names

The sequence name is an optional name you assign so the help compiler can distinguish among different browse sequences. A sequence name cannot contain embedded spaces. If you do not assign a sequence name to a topic, the topic is automatically assigned to a null (unnamed) sequence.

Assigning Browse Sequence Numbers

The sequence number is a unique alphanumeric string that the help author assigns to a help topic in a browse sequence. The help compiler uses the sequence number to do an ASCII (ascending) sort of all help topics defined in a particular browse sequence. For example, when the user selects the next help topic in a browse sequence, the help viewer displays the help topic with the next highest sequence number in that sequence.

Because the help compiler sorts sequence numbers by ASCII value, the length of each string should be consistent across all your help topic files. If you use only numerical characters in your browse sequence numbers, make sure all the numbers contain the same number of digits. (For instance, the number 100 precedes the number 99 because the compiler compares only the first two digits in this pair of numbers).

As you assign sequence numbers to topics, it is a good idea to skip numbers so you can insert new help topics into the sequence at a later time.


Copyright © 2004 Progress Software Corporation
www.progress.com
Voice: (781) 280-4000
Fax: (781) 280-4095