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Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual
book

Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual

by Dan Heller
October 1994
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
770 pages
22h 58m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual
23
Help Facilities
This chapter addresses the general-usage Help facilities that apply to all XView packages.
The help mechanism is available for the application programmer to register help information
in response to user requests.
OPEN LOOK describes a help mechanism that enables the user to get help from anywhere in
the user interface. The user requests help using the Help key on the keyboard, or, if one does
not exist, the F1 function key. When this key is used, the window under the pointer receives
the ACTION_HELP event. In such cases, a Help window is displayed as shown in Figure 23-1.
Figure 23-1. A sample Help window
Note that when you request help on a menu or a menu item, this action will dismiss the menu.
This dismissal is required, since the Menu package must relinquish its pointer and keyboard
grabs in order for the help request to be processed.
Help Facilities
Help Facilities 557
23.1 Using XV_HELP_DATA
The attribute XV_HELP_DATA is used to provide XView with information about where to find
the text for the help frame. The attribute’s value is a string in the form of:
"
filename:token
"
The
filename
is found from a list of directories set in the $HELPPATH environment vari-
able. The actual filename has the .info suffix appended to its base name. Thus, the complete
path to the filename that contains the help information is:
$HELPPATH/
filename
.info
If $HELPPATH is not set, the directory /usr/lib/help ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780937175873