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The format of the link file is very
simple. It contains the full path to the help file prefaced
by the length of the link and a '#' separator. For example,
"\windows\myhelp.htm" is 19 characters
long, so the link file would contain a single line consisting
of:
19#\windows\myhelp.htm
Now, that's about as easy as it gets?
In summary, we've just created our help file and published
it to the TOC using the routine in Listing
2. Figure 2 shows the TOC on the emulator
with our test help file displayed.
That remark was taken out of context…
The last challenge we have is creating
some context sensitive help for our users. I want to allow
them to select help from the start menu (Figure 3)
when they are using the application. As mentioned before,
this is really the only Windows CE Logo compliant way of
accessing help in our applications.
Fortunately, it's pretty easy to get
help in your applications. Microsoft's eVB includes the
Form_HelpClick() event on each form. When the user selects
help from the start menu, we can react to it. We can offer
help globally for the form, or use other state information,
to decide what we'll show.
Once help is requested, you need to
display it to the user. You could popup another form or
display a hidden frame. However, we'll go a step further
and use the standard help viewer (peghelp.exe) to
display a section of our help file we already created. Listing
3 shows how we will accomplish this feat.
Option Explicit
' Declaration of API call to create an
external process
Public Declare Function CeCreateProcess Lib "coredll"
Alias "CreateProcessW" _
(ByVal lpApplicationName As String, ByVal lpCommandLine
As String, _
ByVal lpProcessAttributes As Long, ByVal lpThreadAttributes
As Long, _
ByVal bInheritHandles As Long, ByVal dwCreationFlags As
Long, _
ByVal lpEnvironment As Long, ByVal lpCurrentDirectory As
Long, _
ByVal lpStartupInfo As Long, ByVal lpProcessInformation
As Long) As Long
' Respond to start->Help selection
Private Sub Form_HelpClick()
'Thanks to Derek Mitchell code snippet to create a external
process
Dim Success
Success = CeCreateProcess("peghelp.exe", "file:test.htm#one",
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
End Sub
Listing 3
We'll use a CE API call to create a
new process with the help viewer. The API call I'm using
for came from code snippets Derek had on deVBuzz (Hey, I
not only write for DevBuzz, I'm a user too!). When we get
the event, we spawn the help view with a reference to our
help file and the particular section we want to view.
Conclusion
Providing help for your application's
users is easy to do. Doing it in a Windows CE Logo compliant
way isn't difficult either. I showed how to create a simple
help file, publish it to the table of contents, and finally
provide links to sections of the file within an application.
Now, I got to go and start thinking about that new gaming
application for next year's GenCon!
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