Need Help with Help
Need Help with Help
- Subject: Need Help with Help
- From: Mark T <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 05:08:57 -0400
As silly as this sounds, I can't figure out how to properly make a
Help file for my application. I've been looking through tons of
documentation on various Cocoa sites, reading source code, and
examining how Help works in various programs that I use.
My discovery is that Help is implemented in a wide variety of ways,
some of which are trivial to implement and some of which baffle me.
xFiles used what I regard as the cleanest approach, using a .help
Bundle/Package to encapsulate all of its HTML files and images. Are
there any programs to create .help bundles or do they have to be
crafted by hand(a nearly trivial task with a template to work from)?
In either case, how does one get Project Builder to put it where it's
supposed to be in the application bundle, since you can't add a
really add a folder/package/bundle to its file list? And then how
does one connect it to the Help command? Can you stick a .help file
in Target: Application Settings: Cocoa-Specific: HTML Help File?
On that topic, I tried to make a simple one file html page to use as
my help file, which I entered in the field I just mentioned. But when
I choose Help in my program, it opens the file in Internet Explorer
instead of Helpviewer. I realize that I could change its mapping in
Get Info: Application, but other applications(notably AOL IM) have
html help files which open in IE when double clicked but if you
choose Help within the program, it opens in Helpviewer.
Add to this that I looked through the source code and target settings
for TextEdit and found no help files or references thereto at
all(maybe they're there, but I didn't find em), the normal mapping of
the Help menu item(firstResponder.showHelp:), which would normally
produce the "Help is not available for appname" panel, but in
TextEdit's case, opened a real Help page in Helpviewer.
I know, this is a lot, but I'm very confused about these Help systems
in OS X, so if anyone could clear up any of it, I'd be very
appreciative.
Thanks,
Mark T.
(I apologize if this gets posted more than once...I sent it from the
wrong email address the first time)