Help with Help!

[dpaterso]

On a dialog box my first input field has a VALID clause and I have a HELP button on the bottom.

If I click on the HELP button I get the error message that I have defined in my VALID clause and HELP will not pop up.

In other words it appears that clicking on my HELP button is causing the GET to be VALIDATED BEFORE opening my HELP file and this is a problem if the user has not entered anything into the GET at this point because a blank GET is invalid in my application.

How do I stop the HELP button from causing my GET to be VALIDATED and then return to the get after closing help?

Regards,

Dale.

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

You have to use CANCEL clause for the HELP button. But don't forget to put the focus back to the original control or you will bypass its VALID clause.

EMG

[dpaterso]

Thanks - I thought about that - but I thought there might be a another way as I was worried about skipping the VALID clause.

Thanks again.

By the way - do you (and James and Antonio) ever sleep?

Regards,

Dale.

[Antonio Linares]

No, never

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

No, never

[James Bott]

By the way - do you (and James and Antonio) ever sleep?

I think the answer lies in the bags under my eyes...

James

[dpaterso]

More problems with HELP! Help!

I am testing FWH with Fast-Help Demo (very expensive but appears to be worth the price).

I am not sure if this is problem is coming from FWH or Fast-Help:

When defining a HELP button with HELPTOPIC in my application e.g. HelpTopic( 'New Branch' ) the correct HELP TOPIC is displayed when pressing the button (within my application) BUT when trying to add context specific help to a GET using HELPID e.g. HelpID( 10008 ) there is an attempt to display the context specific help text from my Fast-Help .hlp file BUT althought the popup help window is displayed there is no text just a blank block.

I know that it is finding the correct HELPID in the .hlp file because on another GET that has a non existent HELPID defined (non existent in the .hlp file) the same popup help window is displayed but this at least says 'No Help Topic Associated With This Item'.

What is strange is that if I create a HELPTOPIC in the .hlp file i.e. not a POPUP then the heading of the HELPTOPIC is displayed as context specific help and only the heading is displayed.

Is this an incompatibility between Fast-Help and FWH or problem with my logic?

Dale.

[dpaterso]

After further testing of the above I decided to try using an old version of DotHLP and the same problem exists (although with this version I cannot even get a HELP POPUP to appear as a HELP TOPIC when defining HELPID).

It would appear that FWH HELPTOPIC( ) and HELPINDEX( ) are working correctly BUT REDEFINE GET OGET VAR CVAR HELPID( 1000 ) (for example) is not sending the correct parameter to the help system unless I am doing something wrong.

Thoughts,

Regards,

Dale.

[dpaterso]

Further testing and it appears that the problem is with the HELPID parameter - how to fix?

Regards,

Dale.

[dpaterso]

And more further testing it appear to be a problem with a combination of HELPID and the display thereof.

If I use Fast-Help (Demo) and HELPID on a GET (and the HELPID is defined in the .HLP file) a blank block is displayed and I am almost sure that the text that is in fact NOT being displayed is the 'No Help Topic .....' etc. etc. but if your HELPID is defined in your FWH application but has not been defind in your .HLP file then the 'No Help Topic .....' message is displayed correctly.

Regards,

Dale.

[dpaterso]

Good Morning All!

It would appear that nobody is providing context specific help with their applications?

Regards,

Dale.

[Antonio Linares]

Dale,

Could you please provide a small and self contained sample that reproduces what you are trying to do ? Thanks.

[dpaterso]

Hello,

Here is the line of code:

ReDefine Get ioCode;
Var cCODE;
ID 101;
Of oDlg;
Color CLR_BLUE;
HelpID 10000;
Valid ( CheckBranch( cCode ) )

When pressing F1 a 'blank' popup is displayed i.e. just the small light yellow help popup dialog with no text.

If you choose a non-existent HelpID i.e. let's say that you have used HelpID 10010 and you have not defined this in your .hlp file then the popup is quite correctly displayed with the test 'No Help Topic Associated With This Item'.

In other words if it does not find the relevant HelpID in your .hlp file then it works BUT if it does find the relevant HelpID in your .hlp file then it does not work.

This only applies to help screens defined as 'popups' in your help authoring software i.e. help screens defined as 'topics' work correctly.

There is another message thread related to this that was started by Peter Harmse and it seems that he is (intermittently) having the same problem.

Regards,

Dale.

By the way - is there no facility any more to upload images of errors (like on the old newsgroup)?

[Antonio Linares]

Dale,

Images should be hosted at sites like http://www.imageshack.us/ and the provided URL they give you, be placed here.

[dpaterso]

OK - thanks - I will temporarily use one of our websites for images.

This code:

ReDefine Get ioCode;
Var cCODE;
ID 101;
Of oDlg;
Color CLR_BLUE;
HelpID 2;
Valid ( CheckBranch( cCode ) )

gives you this display:

http://www.fleetfocus.net/software/images/helpid2.JPG

This code:

ReDefine Get;
ioNAME;
Var cNAME;
ID 102;
Of oDlg;
Color CLR_BLUE;
HelpID 3

gives your this display:

http://www.fleetfocus.net/software/images/helpid3.JPG

Please let me know if you could access the images.

In the above examples I have a 'popup' defined in my help authoring software (.hlp file) with HelpID 2 but I do not have a 'popup' defined in my help authoring software (.hlp file) with HelpID 3.

As you can see when the HelpID is not defined in the .hlp file it works correctly but if the HelpID is defined it only displays a blank popup i.e. it appears to be finding the HelpID in the .hlp file but cannot display the text.

Sorry - I just noticed - please ignore the '1' and '2' in the input field - this is test data and has nothing to do with the discussion.

Regards,

Dale.