Building a Help System for Delphi Applications - Creating the Help Text
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The next step is to create an .rtf document that will contain your help text. Just use the one I included for downloading; you will find links to all of the downloadable files for this article on the first page. The document is called "MyProjectHelpFile3.doc." However, it would be negligent for me not to explain how to write a help document in Word, so let's walk through what needs to be done.
- First of all, help text must be saved in a rich text document. So if you are going to create a document use a word processor or text editor that is able to generate rich text documents.
- Second you need to create markers so that the help file compiler will understand your text structure. This primarily involves the "topicID" we created earlier. Every topic title needs at least one footnote mark. If you are using MS Word, you insert this footnote mark by going to "Insert | Reference | Footnote" and then adding the number sign (#) in the custom mark box; click "insert" and the sign will be added as the footnote marker. Then you need to type the topicID of the title. For example:
# IDH_HOWTO2
- Each topic must be written on a separate page with a page break inserted immediately AFTER the entire text and then the footnote mark and id.
- This id starts with "IDH_." If you go back to where you created the .cnt file you will find all the topicIds there. Depending on how sophisticated you want your help system to be, you will need to add more footnotes later on.
As stated before, I've included a rtf document with this article, so look at it and familiarize yourself with its structure. Now we need to add the rtf document to our project. So open the .hpj file and click on "Files." A new window should pop up with four buttons on the right side. Click on the "Add" button, navigate to where you saved the rtf file, select it and click OK.
Next: Creating the MAP File >>
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