About Help for Data Forms and Menus

The help system of Vermont Views allows you to provide users with two levels of context-sensitive help.

The user calls help by pressing the Help key. By default, this key is assigned to KEY_F1. Pressing the Help key the first time brings up help information specific to the current position on the data form or the menu. Pressing the key a second time brings up form-level or more general help information. Table 44.1 shows what help information is displayed at the two levels for each type of item on a data form or menu.

If no help is specified for the first help level, the user is immediately taken to the information for the second-level of help. If no help is available at either level, the default help message is displayed in the message window and a beep is sounded. The default help message is "No help available".

Table 44.1: Help Information for Data Forms and Menus

Current Position	First Help Level	Second Help Level
Data field	Field-specific	Data form
Choice list attached to field	Choice list	Data form
Memo field	Field-specific	Data form
Pushbutton field	Field-specific	Data form
Data field in a scrollable region	Field-specific	Scrollable region
List box	Field-specific	Data form
Menu field	Field-specific	Menu form
Stand-alone choice list menu	Choice list	None available

Help information appears in a help window near the bottom of the screen. The default help window is set to:

nA size of six rows covering the width of the screen (four rows for text; two rows for the top and bottom border)
nLocated such that one row is left at the bottom of the screen for the message window
nA single-line border
nLHELP window attribute, border attribute, and title attribute

A message to aid the user is displayed in a separate message window. By default, the message window covers the bottom row of the screen, is borderless, and has the window attribute of LMESSAGE. If the help information can be scrolled, the message "Use cursor pad keys to scroll through help text" is displayed. If the help information fits within the help window and cannot be scrolled, the message "Press the <ENTER> key or <ESC> key to exit help and continue" is displayed.

Keyboard input is controlled by the help event table, which is #defined as Help:HELPETP. As with all event table processing, the system event table, SYSETP, is searched before the help event table. The user can scroll through the information in the window using the cursor pad keys. By pressing a Zoom key (KEY_AF1 by default), the user can toggle the help display between the normal size of the help window and a full-screen help window. (KEY_AF1 is the Vermont Views name for the keycode returned by Alt-F1 on PCDOS systems and Esc a F1 on most terminal systems.) The user exits from a help level by pressing the key assigned to exit the help viewing system (KEY_ESC by default).

You can change the event assignments for the help system. See Chapter 39, "Installing Event Functions and Modifying Event Tables," for more information.

More:

Specifying the Help Information

Initial Settings of the Help System