Supporting Help Dialog Events

Like other widgets within your application, help windows have some behavior that must be supported by the application.

Hyperlink Events

Most standard hyperlink events are handled internally by the Help System. However, there are four types of hyperlinks that your application is responsible for handling:

• Jump-new-view hyperlinks--Your application must create a new help dialog to honor the author's request for a topic to be displayed in a new help window.

• Man page links--Your application must create a new quick help dialog (or get one from your cache) to display a man page. Typically, the size of man page windows is different from all other help windows.

• Application-defined links--Your application must interpret the data associated with these links. Application-defined links exist only if you and the author have collaborated to create them.

• Text file links--Your application must create a quick help dialog (or get one from you cache) to display the text file.

When Dialogs Are Dismissed

When the user closes a help dialog, your application needs to know so it can store the dialog in its cache, or destroy it. The general help dialog supports a help closed callback. To detect when a quick dialog is dismissed, add a callback to its Close button.

Quick Help Buttons

The behavior for some of the buttons in quick help dialogs must be handled by your application. These buttons can be managed and unmanaged as needed. You add behavior just like any other push button: using an activate callback.

See Also

• "Creating Hyperlinks" describes the types of links supported by the Help System and explains how to create them.