This desk accessory was developed as a general tool for other developers, companies with specialized applications or anyone who may have a need to provide on-line help to the user of an application.
\Developing Your Own Help File
If you find this application useful you can become a registered owner and relieve your conscience by sending a check or money order for $25.00 or what ever you feel it is worth to:
James McCarthy
7 Ship Street
Hingham, Ma. 02043
Mass. residents please add Mass. sales tax.
With the Text >> Help convert application you can create your own help file by using any word processor with the ability to create standard text files (MacWrite has this ability). To create a help file you divide your help document into separate indexed sections. Each section must begin with an index line of 60 characters or less were the first character is a back slash and the line must be terminated by a carriage return. The text of the section may be up to 5000 characters long with paragraphs extending several lines and terminated with a carriage return. HelpDA will word wrap the text within the Help window starting a new paragraph after each carriage return. Tab characters are supported by inserting 5 spaces into the help file or by removing the tab from the help file. For an example of the text file which created this Help file see About HelpDA.txt.
\Possible Uses of Help DA
Help DA's primary use is to provide on-line help for other developers applications or Internal company database applications.
HelpDA supports text edit copy, allowing the user to copy text from a help file to be pasted into any application. Therefore, another use may be to store common statements or routines in a help file and copy the information when needed in a document.
HelpDA allows multiple help files on a volume so that the user may select the desired help file required for that application. It will initially search for a file called HELP.FILE and if not found will bring up the standard file dialog. I realize this may not be ideal for developers so I am offering the C source code to any interested developer for $75.00. This will allow you to modify the code as you see fit to be used in your application. The source code may not be the greatest but it is a good example of how to handle events in a desk accessory. The sources main short comming is its extensive use of global variables. The DA was developed using Megamax C which sets up a handle to the global variables thus following the DA convention outlined by Apple.
\HelpDA Limitations
Due to the fact that this is a desk accessory I felt it was necessary to apply a few limitations to help prevent memory problems with some applications. Help DA will allow up to 60 different index topics. The text portion of each index can be up to 5,000 characters long (that's a total document size of 60 * 5,000). The desk accessory creates a text handle for the current index topic only, so that the maximum memory used is only about 12K to 15K.
\Disclaimer
With the flexibility of this desk accessory, it is not possible for me to test all possible memory limitations of various help file sizes. Therefore, the developer of the help file used must take full responsibility for any problems which may arise as the result of using HelpDA. If you encounter any consistent problems I would appreciate your help in solving the problem by sending a copy of the help file, the name of the application in use when the problem occured, and your name and address so that I can return a thank you and a way to resolve the problem.
