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Subject:Oracle context sensitive help From:Sella Rush <sellar -at- APPTECHSYS -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 13 Oct 1998 19:21:37 -0700
I'm in the unenviable position of creating context sensitive help for an
Oracle application. I don't know much about Oracle; most of my background
has been with Visual C++ applications, but even there my context-sensitive
experience is not what it could be. Clearly I need help from any Oracle
experts out there. (The contract developer knows nothing about Help.) I've
checked various archives and have found only tantalizing tidbits.
What exactly is possible for Help in an Oracle app? What's This help would
be nice, but there are virtually no dialog boxes in the app! All activity
is done in a series of screens (also called forms?). BTW, is this normal?
Coming from MS Dev Studio, I would have made several of the screens into
dialog boxes.
Anyway, I need to create context sensitive help for all the fields in the
screens. Is What's This help (that is, the ability to click on a
control/field and have a pop up window appear) out completely? If so, is my
only other option to offer what my RoboHelp manual calls "Window level
help", which is one topic per window accessed through F1? This solution is
ok, but not great. Ideally, I'd like either What's This help, or a WinHelp
window showing a topic defining the field and a link to a procedure.
Once I know what types of topics to write, I need to know how to link them
up to the app, or more accurately what to tell the developer about linking.
There will be standard .hlp/.cnt files to be accessed from the main menu as
well as the connections between field/window and topic. I've noticed that
there are field names, form names, and window names; is there a way to have
the app look for the appropriate topic using these, or does each link
between field/window and topic have to be hard coded?
I should note that because the app is being developed by a contractor, I
don't have access to the Oracle development platform. I understand that
there is something called Oracle help--a proprietary feature that presumably
has nothing to do with WinHelp, but this isn't really an option unless
absolutely necessary.
Thanks in advance!
Sella Rush mailto:sellar -at- apptechsys -dot- com
Applied Technical Systems (ATS)
Bremerton, Washington
Developers of the CCM Database
