Conference unxa::cde

608.0. "Custom CDE help viewer questions" by CSC32::T_LONGBOTHAM (Clatu berrada nictu, Gort!) Fri Feb 21 1997 18:04

    I have a customer who has a number of questions regarding custom
    help system development.  I have been wrestling with the documentation
    but so far I have been unable to get definitive answer.  One of his
    questions was the number of characters that is the limit for a literal
    entity.  I could not find this documented anywhere in the "Common
    Desktop Environment: Help System Author's and Programmer's Guide",
    however, through experimentation I found it to be 240 characters.  The
    customer would like to know if this can be overridden.  Of course the
    answer is to put the entities that need to be longer into text files
    but the customer believes that due to the large number required that
    it will be cumbersome and less integral.  Nonetheless, I do believe
    that this is the only answer at this point.  He also has the following
    questions which I am unable to fully answer:
    I am trying to implement item help (the user clicks on a widget
    and information on that widget is displayed) in our application.  Each
    widget in our application is assigned a unique ID.  This ID is mapped
    to our helpvolume using the following format:
    
    <helpvolume>
    <hometopic> UTILITY NAME
    <s1 id=mainwindow> Utility Window Title
         description of the window.
    <s2 id=widgetA> WidgetA Title
    <s2 id=widgetB> WidgetB Title
         description of widgetB
    <s2 id=widgetC> WidgetC Title
         description of widgetC
    
    
    This method works well when a description of each widget is available.
    
    The Problem:
    We are using an existing users manual to create our helpvolumes.  There
    are instances where a group of related widgets are given one
    description.
    
    Possible solutions:
    
    1.  Copy the description at each appropriate widget element.
        PROBLEM: This adds to the complexity of the help volume and
        decreases maintainablility.
    
    2.  Define an entity.  Reference the entity at each appropriate widget
        element.
        PROBLEM: The entity content has a maximum length of 240 characters.
    
    3.  Assign each topic multiple IDs. ie
        <s2 id=widgetA AND widgetB AND widgetC> Generic Title
        description of all the widgets.
    
       PROBLEM:  I am not sure if this or a similiar construct is allowed.
    
    If the above is impossible is it possible to change the DTD to
    accomplish this?
    
    

>    This method works well when a description of each widget is available.
>    
>    The Problem:
>    We are using an existing users manual to create our helpvolumes.  There
>    are instances where a group of related widgets are given one
>    description.

This is very common for widgets like radio boxes, options menus, etc. 
If a child widget has no help callback, then Motif will look for 
the widget parent's help callback and so on up the widget hierachy until
a help callback is found. In the case of a radio box, the rowcolumn can 
have a help callback instead of one help callback per toggle button. 
Alternatively, give them all a help callback but make it the same. 
    
>    Possible solutions:
>    
>    1.  Copy the description at each appropriate widget element.
>        PROBLEM: This adds to the complexity of the help volume and
>        decreases maintainablility.
Definitely don't do this one. 

    
>    2.  Define an entity.  Reference the entity at each appropriate widget
>        element.
>        PROBLEM: The entity content has a maximum length of 240 characters.
Don't do this either. 

    
>    3.  Assign each topic multiple IDs. ie
>        <s2 id=widgetA AND widgetB AND widgetC> Generic Title
>        description of all the widgets.
>    
>       PROBLEM:  I am not sure if this or a similiar construct is allowed.
Yes, this is allowed. The syntax though is not like you have described. 
You want to use the location id tag. You can have multiple location id 
tags within a single topic or subsection of the help volume. 

			pete