Re: ANNOUNCE : HelpViewer 0.1

[Andreas Heppel]

On 2003-01-20 12:51:05 +0100 Nicolas Roard <nicolas@roard.com> wrote:

> On 2003-01-20 11:52:19 +0100 Andreas Heppel <aheppel@web.de> wrote:
>
>
> > > By the way, how does the help system is intended to work, for 
> > > international
> > > support ?
> > Isn't this inherently implemented in pathForResource:ofType: ? I think 
> > this methods checks my languange sundirectories in myapp.app/Resources for 
> > appropriate language dependent stuff, doesn't it?
>
> Err ... yes, it does. I tested it and it works beautifully ;)
> Duno why I didn't thought of that. :)))
It really does. I just tried it for Burn.app. Beautiful. :)) Thx.

> > What I'd be interested in more, is the question how to set up a context 
> > sensitive help for certain UI elements. To be more precise I seem to have 
> > understood the API, but would like to know how an application is supposed 
> > to reach 'context help mode'. Will I have certain buttons in my panels or 
> > should there be a menu entry or how else is this supposed to be in *Step?
>
> A context sensitive help ? you mean, tooltips ?
Well, yes and no. Tooltips were interestinmg, too, but as far as I've seen 
they are not implemented, yet. But what I have found (and what could be a 
kind of replacement for tooltips) is the possibility to register help 
strings for objects. It's in NSHelpManager:
- (NSAttributedString*) contextHelpForObject: (id)object
The method
- (BOOL) showContextHelpForObject: (id)object locationHint: (NSPoint) point
will then pop up a panel displaying this help text.
Using
- (void) activateContextHelpMode: (id)sender
one can activate a context help mode where the context help panel is opened 
automagically when the user clicks on the object, e.g. a UI element.
My question is where activateContextHelpMode would be called, i.e. do I 
provide a menu entry such as 'Context Help F1' or maybe something else. I 
wonder whether there is a 'standardised' *Step way of achieving this.

Cheers,
Andreas

--
Andreas Heppel

Mail: aheppel at web dot de
Home: http://www.andreasheppel.de

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