| Inge Jones |  posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 2:39 pm | |
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| Having made a start on the Help system for the PJSE plugins, and them now becoming the default shipping plugins, is it time to consider having a facility for various plugins to have a Help section under the main Help menu? I am going to spend a bit of time exploring how to use the Microsoft html help system, and would be willing to work on coordinating help for various sections if I can understand how it works. Otherwise, it would be nice if developers could access the Help menu just like they can the Tools menu now, with the inclusion of a hover tooltip feature. |
| jaxad0127 | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:02 pm | |
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| To my knowledge, you can (somewhat) easily specify a certain papge within an html help file. Microsoft (or someone) has a free compiler for these. |
| Xenos | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:04 pm | |
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| Compiling help files can be a real drag. I always just make HTML files and make calls to specific pages and named anchors within pages for the help systems on my applications. That way it's easy to update and edit them. The HTML files can be either distributed with the software an accessed locally with a browser (if bandwidth is the primary concern) or you can host them remotely if having the pages updated and current are of more concern.
You might consider some sort of Wiki type software or multi-user blog or other basic content management system for this so that other people can post help, make tutorials that are attached/referenced by the related help topics, and so on. <shrug>
If you want some help setting something like this up - let me know. I can definitely put you in touch with some software that will do the job and can help figure out how to link to it from within an App. (I know how to do it in VB6, and I'm sure it isn't difficult in .NET (C or VB). Shouldn't be too hard to figger out. |
| Inge Jones | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:16 pm | |
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| Xenos, how do you tell C# to go to a particular place on a page? So far the help buttons for PJSE plugins do go to a particular html page but it would be nice to make it context-sensitve |
| jaxad0127 | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:30 pm | |
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| Well, each section needs an anchor tag with a name attribute ("<a name="blah"></a>") so it can be referenced. Then, in the url, add #blah to have the browser go to that section. |
| Inge Jones | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:34 pm | |
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| Peter tried that and it didn't seem to work for him. Can you definitely do that from a C# visual control? Does it need special syntax? I can do that within an html page of course. |
| jaxad0127 | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:36 pm | |
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| If you're open the pages fine, just append their address to include the position information. |
| Inge Jones | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:37 pm | |
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| I'll have to get Peter to post here and say exactly what he was doing. I am sure he tried it that way. |
| jaxad0127 | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:40 pm | |
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| I've had problems getting it to work if its being opened in a new window. Putting it in an existing window always seems to work fine for me. |
| Inge Jones | posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:43 pm | |
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| SimPe isn't running in a browser window though, it has to open one for the help file. So what do you do from your application - open the window first and then load the right place? Can you paste an example of a block of C# code that does this please? |
