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No there's nothing here to get anyone mad. And I've found that people are
more likely to read and respond to the philosophical posts than to the
specific help questions. However, I do need help.
I have inherited an online help system for NT which uses compiled HTML Help.
The 50 or so context-sensitive help topics each open in a custom single-pane
window when you press F1. If you want to see more help, other than whatever
links may be within the topic, you click Open Main Help, which opens the
entire tri-pane .chm file.
This has several disadvantages:
* If you click a link in the text of context sensitive topic there's no Back
button in the custom window.
* You don't know in advance which topic you're going to open when you click
Open Main Help.
* When you open the main help, the first window doesn't close, so now you've
got two windows open obscuring the GUI.
* The context sensitive topic is also compiled into the main help, along
with its little Open Main Help button, which, in that context, is worse than
useless.
I could use a separate .chm file for the context-sensitive files, and then
open the main .chm from them as necessary, and even script the first .chm to
close automatically when you open the main .chm. But since I want to use
some of the context-sensitive files in the main .chm I'd have to maintain
two sets of the same files, with different links on the bottom.
So, I think the best alternative is to just dump the custom window and open
the entire .chm to the correct page whenever someone presses F1.
Does anyone have a better way?
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