To Create a Help Family (Common Desktop Environment: Help System Author's and Programmer's Guide)

Common Desktop Environment: Help System Author's and Programmer's Guide

To Create a Help Family

Pick a file name that is unique to your product. Use the.hf extension to identify the file as a help family.
```
 
family.hf 
```

Enter the following lines into the file:
```
*.charSet:      character-set
 *.title:        family title
 *.bitmap:       icon file
 *.abstract:     family abstract
 *.volumes:      volume volume volume ... 
```
Where character-set specifies the character set used by the family title and family abstract strings. See "Understanding Font Schemes" for a list of supported character sets. The family title and family abstract should not contain any HelpTag markup; this file is not processed with the HelpTag software.

The icon file is optional. If you provide one, the path you use to specify the location of the file should be a complete path name. If you do not provide an icon, do not include the *.bitmap resource in your family file.

The list of volume names identifies which volumes belong to the family. The volumes will be listed in the order they appear on this line. A volume may be listed in more than one family.

If any of the values occupy more than one line, end each line -- except the last -- with a backslash (\).

Any line in the file that begins with an ! (exclamation mark) is a comment line and is ignored.

When you prepare your final product, you should install your family.hf file with the rest of your help files. When the desktop integration script, (dtappintegrate) is run, it creates the symbolic links to your family file.

The CDE Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide describes how to run the dtappintegrate script.

Example

Here's a family file for the desktop's online help. Comments at the top of the file identify the family and release version.

 !##############################################
 !#                                            #
 !#          Desktop  Help Family              #
 !#                                            #
 !#                 Version 1.0                #
 !#                                            #
 !##############################################
 *.charSet:      ISO-8859-1
 *.title:        Desktop Version 1.0
 *.bitmap:       /usr/dt/appconfig/help/C/cdelogo.pm
 *.abstract:     Overview and Basic Desktop Skills \ 
                 * File Manager and the Desktop \ 
                 * Front Panel \ 
                 * Application Manager \ 
                 * Style Manager \ 
                 * Text Editor \ 
                 * Mailer
 
*.volumes: Intromgr.sdl Filemgr.sdl FPanel.sdl
            Appmanager.sdl Stylemgr.sdl
            Textedit.sdl Mailer.sdl

The help family file actually included with the desktop software may not exactly match this example.

To Create a Help Family

Example

See Also