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How can I open different help topics for each controls of a complicated form?

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 12:53
by Ferenc Nagy
The dialog editor provides only one [Help] button for each form or dialog.
If I define a common help context identifier for the whole dialog then the user has to scroll up and down or issue a search from his/her browser.
I think the task would be simpler if each controls (or their container group boxes) had separate context identifier.

How can I determine in most simple way whether which control or group box is in focus when the user presses the [F1] key?

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 13:44
by Tonton Luc
Hi,

:idea:

Code: Select all

Hdl = vpi::winGetFocus(), CtlId =  vpi::winGetCtlId(Hdl),

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 14:01
by Thomas Linder Puls
I will suggest that you put tooltips on the individual controls, and only have overall help on the help button.

The tooltips must be set later

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 12:07
by Ferenc Nagy
The following automatically generated command in the GeneratedInitialize() procedure of a form behave just like some property settings of a scilex control. They cause "single fact has no value" runtime error.

Code: Select all

load_but:toolTip := core::some(simple_tip), load_but:tooltipText := toolTip::tip("Load style set form external file."),

The workaround is the same
A) Move this lines in the onShow procedure.
B) Delete the tooltip definitions from the property sheets, and enter them manually.

The Developer Team's task:
C) Investigate the automatic program generation triggered by the property sheets and split the generated code between two procedures
1) generatedInitialize() and 2) generateOnShow.
:-( It is a work of Sisyphus because the many kinds of controls and their hundreds of properties.Image

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 10:57
by Thomas Linder Puls
That could be a good idea.

Personally, I think there are far too many properties mentioned in the dialog editor. I only use the editor for the layout and (coordinates, docking/anchors and visit order) and a few of the event handlers. The rest I prefer to write by hand.

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 12:35
by Paul Cerkez
Ditto.

Tooltip is a good idea

Posted: 24 Oct 2014 18:58
by Ferenc Nagy
Thank you. The tooltips can be collected later to a table using Word and included into the documentation.