Personal Helper Main Help

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Personal Helper is a software utility designed to create Windows Help Files. You create a project, add contexts, enter text, and Personal Helper does the rest. It assigns context identifiers,  writes the .HPJ and .RTF files, calls the HC31 help compiler, and calls WINHELP to display the result. It is particularly useful for Visual Basic programmers, because an entire project can be automatically imported, and context id's assiged to each control. You can then enter text, compile it, and add another file that the utility creates (projectname.HBA), to your project source code. This file contains a sub called get_help, which will assign helpcontexts to all controls for which you entered text. It only puts id's in for those controls, thus saving a significant overhead for non-informational items.

GETTING STARTED.  After installation, fire up PERSHELP.EXE. NOTE: Make certain that you either create a program item for the pershelp, and that the default directory is set to the same subdirectory as PERSHELP.EXE. This will ensure that the DATABASE is found. You get a message saying something like "UNABLE to OPEN DATABASE FILE" if you don't.

Your first screen is  the Personal Helper Main Screen. To create a new project, Press the ADD button under Choose Project. You will then be asked to edit the Project Name, the font, icon, and directory for the project. After entering this information, choose OK to return to the Main Screen.

Once you have entered the project information, you may want to pull in your Visual Basic forms and fields. NOTE: YOUR PROJECT FILES MUST BE SAVED AS TEXT, NOT AS BINARY! THIS IS AN OPTION YOU SET UNDER PROJECT OPTIONS! IF YOU HAVEN'T SAVED YOUR PROJECT AS TEXT, SAVE EACH INDIVIDUAL FORM USING THE FILE/SaveAS OPTION, AND CHECK THE SAVE AS TEXT CHECKBOX!  This product was originally designed to help me create helpfiles for my VisBasic applications, and is thus project-oriented. Choose the IMPORT button. This will bring you to a   file open dialog box. Choose the MAK file and the OK button. Personal Helper will read the make file, create a projname!MAIN context as the default context, and then read each form consecutively. It will create a context for each form as projname!formname,  and then a context for each helpable control as formname!fieldname (I hope you used understanable mnemonics for your controls; Form1!Text1 doesn't tell you much about what you're writing help for!)

Once you have imported the file, you're ready to begin your Context helpwriting. Back on the main form, choose the CONTEXT button at the bottom left-hand side. You will now see your CONTEXT id's. Choose the context from the listbox that you want to edit. I usually like to start writing the project overview, like this one, by looking for the projname!MAIN control. This one will be the default help screen when the user presses F1. You can change the default heading  and keywords to those that you would like. Choose the EDIT button to get to the context edit form. Here, you will see a row of buttons and a listbox of available contexts. You are now ready to begin writing your help files.

You will see a row of buttons and a listbox of control names on the top of the form. Some of the  buttons are pretty self-explanatory for those used to WORD, etc., but to review:

The Bold button is a toggle; i.e., when it's down all text between the down stroke and the up stroke (invoked by hitting the button a second time) will be in bold.

The Italic button is also a toggle. All text in between will be italicized.

The Tab button will move all text in.

The Newline button will ensure the end of a line, independent of font & winhelp size.

The Bitmap button will allow you to import bitmaps

The Cut button cuts highlighted text.

The Copy button copies highlighted text to the clipboard

The Paste button pastes from the clipboard

The View button will compile the context you're currently writing and let you look at it in the Windows Help file.

The Compile button will create the .HPJ and .RTF files for the whole project, compile it, and fire up the entire helpfile into Windows Help.

The Save button saves the current context.

The Popup button creates a popup window to the context highlighted in the context combobox. NOTE: Those contexts with text already written are identified by having a * in front of their name. If you choose a context that doesn't yet have text written, you'll need to write it before compiling the helpfile, or you'll get an invalid context message when you jump to it from WinHelp.

The Jump button creates a jump context to the context highlighted in the context combobox. See the warning in Popup about invalid contexts.

Choose OK to save the context and return to the Context form.

Continue the above for all contexts for which you want to write help info.

When Done, choose MAKE to create the Helpfile. This will also fire up a copy in a Windows Help screen, for you to view and review. NOTE: You must close this helpfile BEFORE attempting to re-make the file, or you'll get a Warning that the helpfile has changed, and bomb out of Windows Help. In general, always close the Helpfile before returning to Personal Helper.

Once the Help file is the way you want it, look for a file called projname.HBA This is a Visual Basic  file, containing a single subroutine called get_help(). Import this file into a new module of your project, and then call get_help from within the form_load procedure of your startup app. Re-compile your project, and you should now get responses to your F1 requests, exactly as you mapped them in your helpfile. What could be easier ?

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