The topic does not exist. Contact your application vendor...

[The Tech Writer <techwrtr -at- CRL -dot- COM>]

I just figured out a solution to an age-old problem with hooking up
context sensitive help with our applications.

The Problem
-----------
Our software engineers, bless their hearts, continually apply hex values
outside of the appropriate range to program elements. When they do
that, there ends up being multiple elements with the same context number.
When there are two or more dialog boxes with the same number, pressing
the help button on all of the dialog boxes takes the user to the topic
for one of them. A kludgy solution for this is to create a "branch" page
that has a jump to the appropriate topic.

When the elements that share the context number are a dialog box and an
element that has no help attached to it, and the user presses the help
button on the dialog box, the user gets a message saying "The topic does
not exist. Contact your application vendor for an updated Help file. (129)."

The Solution
------------
To solve this problem, you can create an additional *.hm file, including
all of the entries that should match up with the duplicated context
strings. For example, if this was part of the main *.hm file:

  unrelated_element    0x2034b
  dialog_box_1         0x20994
  dialog_box_2         0x2034b

where dialog_box_2 and unrelated_element share the context number
0x2034b, you would copy the line "dialog _box_2        0x2034b" to
another file, and name it fixup.hm (or something like that).

Then, include the fixup.hm file in your .hpj file's Include Files
section, *making sure the fixup.hm file is included at the top of the
list*. You must make sure it is at the top, or this fix will not work.

If anyone has any questions about this, feel free to drop me a line.

-David Castro
 techwrtr -at- crl -dot- com
 http://www.crl.com/~techwrtr/

                  TECHWR-L List Information
To send a message about technical communication to 2500+ list readers,
E-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot-  Send administrative commands
         ALL other questions or problems concerning the list
       should go to the listowner, Eric Ray, at ejray -at- ionet -dot- net -dot-