End-user Online Help

rbuser

We're bundling ReportBuilder into our application as an end-user reporting
solution. I asked on the newsgroups a while ago about getting a help file
appropriate for end-users and the answer was to use the help file shipped
with Learning ReportBuilder, which is an appropriate help file. When I
attempted to include this file in our installation I had problems and so I
left off on it for other priority items, but am now revisiting it.

The help file for Learning ReportBuilder is titled LearnReportBuilder.hlp
and there is an accompanying file titled LearnReportBuilder.cnt which the
help file seems to need. If you copy just these two files to a folder by
themselves the help seems to work if you double-click it. Now, I can rename
the .hlp file, but I can't rename the .cnt file or the help ceases to work
when you double-click it. This isn't necessarily a problem, but I was
wondering if there was a way to change this behavior without republishing
the .hlp file (which we can't really do) or a way to get the .hlp file to
work without needing the .cnt file.

Also, I'm having trouble figuring out where the program is looking for its
help file. It is finding the developer's help file when there isn't any help
file at all in the same folder as the .exe it is bundled with. Since we're
just using a TppDesigner component (with the HelpFile property blank) I was
wondering where it was finding this help file. If I define a filename in
this HelpFile property will it look in the .exe's folder and stop there if
it doesn't find anything?

TIA.

-Chris

nardmoseley

1. The .cnt file is a standard Windows help table of contents file. There is
no way to rename the .hlp and .cnt. Doing so will break the table of
contents.

2. You can use the Designer.OnHelp event to control what happens when the
end-user requests help. See the article below....


--------------------------------------
Customizing the Designer's Help Menu
--------------------------------------

The TppDesigner.OnHelp event can be used to control what happens when the
end-user requests help.


The following is from the RBuilder.hlp file topic for TppDesigner.OnHelp:


Declaration
-----------

property OnHelp: TppHelpEvent = procedure(Sender: TObject; var aHelpFile,
aKeyphrase: String; var aCallHelp: Boolean) of object;

Description
-----------

Write an OnHelp event handler to perform special processing when the user
requests help. The OnHelp event is triggered when the user makes a selection
and clicks 'F1' or access the Help | Help Topics menu option.

The aHelpFile parameter can take a file name or full path and file name. If
the aCallHelp parameter is set to False, WinHelp will not be called.

--

Nard Moseley
Digital Metaphors Corporation
www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

It was pretty easy to define a filename in the HelpFile parameter, but we're
getting something weird with it now. From inside the Designer if you press
F1 to call Help you get this error:

"An error exists in this Help file. Contact your application vendor for an
updated Help file. (1053)"

If you select the Help | Help Topics command from the menu then it works
every time. Also, once you've gotten the above error, pressing F1 does
nothing, until you've launched the Help from the menu successfully, then it
throws the error on F1 again, but again, only once.

Any ideas what we need to do to get the F1 key working without this error?
Have not tried defining the OnHelp method yet, but that seems overkill when
all we're doing is specifying a filename -- is that what we need to do?

TIA.