Inside Macintosh: Apple Guide Complete /

Preface - About This Book

What's in This Book

This book contains four parts and four appendixes. It is designed to be read either from start to finish or in less structured ways. If you are responsible for all tasks associated with creating a guide file (that is, designing, scripting, and developing code), you may want to read the chapters in order. If you have fewer tasks, you may choose to read only the information that applies to them. You can also use this book as a reference, particularly Chapters 3 and 10 and the appendixes.

This book is filled with screen examples that illustrate Apple Guide's features and show how your interface should look. Some screen examples are from the Apple guide files that come with system software: About Help, Tutorial, Macintosh Guide, and Shortcuts. Other screen examples are from SurfWriter Guide, a sample guide file for SurfWriter, a pseudo word-processing application.

The next sections describe the information you'll find in each part of the book.

Designing Your Guide Files

The first part of the book introduces you to the features of Apple Guide. It shows you how to use interface elements in your guide files and describes strategies you can use to plan and design your guide file content before you even begin scripting. In addition, it shows you how to create two powerful search features for your guide files, Index and Look For.

Building Your Guide Files

The second part of the book introduces you to Guide Maker. It shows you how to build and test guide files using Guide Maker, how to localize them, and how to convert Windows help content into guide files.

Integrating Your Application

The third part of the book describes the Apple Guide application programming interface (API). You can use the functions described in this chapter to integrate your guide files into your application.

Using the Guide Script Commands

The fourth part of the book describes each Guide Script command. For each one, it provides correct syntax, a description of its parameters, a description of the command itself, and examples of its use.

Reference Material

The appendixes provide additional information about the topics described in this book. Appendix A contains a list of abbreviations for all Guide Script commands. Appendix B contains a summary list of all Guide Script commands and their parameters. Appendix C describes SurfWriter Guide, a sample guide file for a pseudo word-processing application, and includes many of its source files. Appendix D contains a checklist you use to help you check off tasks as you create, modify, and localize guide files.

The glossary, which follows the appendixes, defines all common terms that appear in boldface in the book. At the end of the book, you'll find an index that can help you easily locate information about particular topics of interest.