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Inside Macintosh: More Macintosh Toolbox /

Chapter 3 - Help Manager / Help Manager Reference

Help Manager Routines

Setting and Getting Information for Help Resources

Using the HMSetMenuResID or HMScanTemplateItems function, you can set help resources for menus, dialog boxes, or windows of your application that do not currently have help resources associated with them. You can also supplement the 'hmnu' and 'hdlg' resources currently associated with the menus and dialog boxes of your application by using the HMSetMenuResID or HMSetDialogResID function. You can use the HMGetMenuResID function to determine the 'hmnu' resource ID associated with a menu.

When you use the HMSetDialogResID function, you can supplement any 'hdlg' resources that are specified in item list ('DITL') resources. The resource you specify in the HMSetDialogResID function adds to any help that already exists in the form of
an 'hdlg' resource for the next dialog box or alert box to be displayed. You can use an 'hdlg' resource (described in "Providing Help Balloons for Items in Dialog Boxes and Alert Boxes" on page 3-47) to provide help balloons for items common to several dialog boxes and alert boxes, and you can use the HMSetDialogResID function to provide help balloons for items that you add to individual dialog boxes and alert boxes.

You can use the HMGetDialogResID function to get the resource ID of the 'hdlg' resource that will be used by the next dialog box as a result of a previous call to the HMSetDialogResID function. If the 'hdlg' resource currently in use has not been overridden by a call to HMSetDialogResID, the HMGetDialogResID function returns a result code of resNotFound.

You can use the HMGetDialogResID and HMSetDialogResID functions when displaying nested dialog boxes (although, in general, you should close one dialog box before displaying another). For example, you can save the 'hdlg' resource of the current dialog box, set a new 'hdlg' resource, display the new dialog box, and then restore the setting of the previous 'hdlg' resource when you close the second dialog box.

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Subtopics

HMSetMenuResID

HMGetMenuResID

HMScanTemplateItems

HMSetDialogResID

HMGetDialogResID