Re: chm file weirdness

Subject: Re: chm file weirdness
From: pd -dot- lees -at- btinternet -dot- com
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 15:01:19 +0100 (BST)

Andrea,

> My chm file works fine on my desktop, but once it's compiled in
> to the application, things get weird. When the chm file opens,
> it opens showing the Index tab rather than the TOC tab.

It's possible that your developers are using the HH_DISPLAY_INDEX command, which opens a .chm file with the Index tab at the front and optionally searches for a specified keyword. Using a different API command, such as HH_HELP_CONTEXT or HH_DISPLAY_TOPIC, may fix the problem. You may want to point your developers at Microsoft's HTML Help API documentation, which is available online at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/htmlhelp/html/vsconovmain.asp

And for a fairly comprehensive list of articles on how to connect HTML Help to an application, see:

http://www.mshelpwiki.com/index.php?page=HTMLHelpArticles

One thing you may not be aware of is that a .chm file *always* opens with the most recently-used tab at the front, unless it is opened using an API command like HH_DISPLAY_TOC, HH_DISPLAY_INDEX, or HH_DISPLAY_SEARCH (each of which selects a particular tab in the navigation pane). To determine which was the most recently-used tab, Windows consults the file hh.dat, which you should find in a subdirectory of \Document and Settings, \Windows, or \Winnt, depending on the version of Windows. Deleting or renaming the hh.dat file clears the "tab history" for all the .chms on your machines, together with some other machine-specific settings -- favorite help topics, for example, and changes that you've made to the size and position of a help window.

Pete




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