$ # K {bmc minihelp.bmp} MINIHELP: Simple Help Example Application

MINIHELP is a sample application that illustrates what could be considered a 'mimimum' implementation of help in a Windows application.

While it would be possible to write an application that was far more minimum than MINIHELP, such an application would not implement some of the features of a Windows application that many users would consider 'standard'.

The features that MINIHELP implements:

Custom Icon
Standard Menu Bar
Standard Help Menu
Full WinHelp Support
Keyboard Accelerator Usage
Version Control Information
Full Win16, Win32s, Win32, and Windows 95 Common Source Code

Feature: 	Custom Icon
Description: 	While this might appear to be a trivial and obvious feature, it is suprising how many sample applicaitons fail to implement this.
Files used to implement Feature:
MINIHElP.ICO : This contains the bitmap representation of the icon. It was created with the icon editor application that comes with the SDK.

MINHELP.RC : This file defines all of the resources used by the application, including the ICON resource type that will allow the custom icon to be loaded.

MINIHELP.C : Loads the ICON resource, and assigns it to the hIcon element of the WNDCLASS structure that is passed into the RegisterClass call.

Feature: 	An 'About...' Box With Custom Icon And Font Style
Description: 	Many sample applications simply use a call to 'MessageBox' to put up their 'About' box (if they even bother to do so at all). This application goes a little further by not only creating an actual dialog box, but by also taking the few extra steps that make the dialog look better, and contain useful information.
Files used to implement Feature:
GENERIC.DLG
MINIHELP.RC
ABOUT.C

Feature: 	Standard Menu Bar
Description: 	The book "The Windows Interface: An Application Design Guide", presents a recommended standard menu bar configuration. As closely as appropriate, this application follows the presented layout.
Files used to implement Feature:
SAMPLE.RC
GENERIC.C

Feature: 	Standard Help Menu
Description: 	
Files used to implement Feature:

Feature: 	Full WinHelp Support
Description: 	
Files used to implement Feature:

Feature: 	Keyboard Accelerator Usage
Description: 	
Files used to implement Feature:

Feature: 	Version Control Information
Description: 	
Files used to implement Feature:

Feature: 	Full Win16, Win32s, Win32 Common Source Code
Description: 	
Files used to implement Feature:

This is a sample WinHelp source document. To easily modify this document to customize it for use in your application perform the following steps:

(Assuming you are using Windows Word other document editors could be used, but you are on your own for doing the appropriate conversions)

1.	Open up this document.

2.	Turn on the 'View | Field Codes' option from the menu bar.

3.	Either remove, or appropriately alter the "{bmc minihelp.bmp}" field on the first line. Do not make any modifications to the "$ # K" that preceeds it.

4.	Create a new document and enter into it all of the information you are wanting to have in the WinHelp file. Avoid 'hard' pagebreaks (<ctrl-enter>), and 'fancy' formatting.

5.	Change the "{include SAMPLE.DOC}" field to point to your new document

6.	Hilite the entire 'include' field that you just altered, and hit F9 (this will grab the information out of your document). If you run into problems with this step, simply delete the entire 'include' field, and copy/paste in the document you had created.

7.	Save this document out, but make sure that you save it out as an RTF file, and not a DOC file. The Help Compiler reads the RTF format for building WinHelp files.