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> Is it possible to invoke a topic in a secondary window when the user
> presses F1? I've got some text strings that have context-sensitive
> help associated with 'em -- but I want to have the users go into a
> secondary window, not a main window.
Well, Joe. The answer is yes and no. In Win 3.11 help, you have to have
the primary window open even if the text you're interested in appears
in the secondary window, so the problem is not how to open the secondary
window, but what to display in the primary window. I've directed topics
to secondary windows from the search engine, but never from F1 help. I
suppose you could fill the primary window with the contents topic.
Anyway... Create a dummy topic with the contents string that you want
to call from the F1 event. Dummy won't contain any text, just entry,
or bang, macros (those macros that begin with an exclamation point that
execute when a topic is opened).
In the dummy topic, create a macro that opens the secondary window and
displays the desired topic (JumpID, I think), and a macro that displays
*something* in the open and empty primary window. If you could assume
that the help app was open before the F1 event, you could use the "back"
macro to access the previously-displayed topic -- but you can't make that
assumption, so you may want to use the macro that displays the contents
page (Jump Contents).
In the "real" topic that appears in the secondary window, set a Focus
Window macro to bring it to the top of the stack when all the flip flopping
in the primary window is finished.
Sue Gallagher
sgallagher -at- expersoft -dot- com
-- The _Guide_ is definitive.
Reality is frequently inaccurate.
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