Introduction to Providing Help Tags in Carbon

This document describes how to use the Carbon Help Manager to add help tags to your user interface.

Help tags are short contextual help messages that appear onscreen when the user hovers the pointer over an element in an application’s user interface. They allow an application to identify the objects in its user interface. Help tags replace Balloon Help, available in Mac OS 9.2 and earlier. Help tags supplement user assistance provided by Apple Help help books.

The Carbon Help Manager is an application programming interface (API) that allows your application to create and display help tags. The Carbon Help Manager also provides a Help menu through which users can access your application’s help books and other help resources. The Carbon Help Manager is available in Mac OS X 10.0 and later, and in Mac OS 8.1 and later when CarbonLib 1.0.4 and later is present.

If you are writing a Carbon application with a user interface, you should read this document to learn how you can add help content to your interface. Chapter 2, Carbon Help Manager Concepts, gives an overview of help tags and how they are displayed by the Carbon Help Manager, as well as guidelines for writing help tag content. Chapter 3, Carbon Help Manager Tasks for Adding Help Tags, provides examples and code listings showing you how to create help tags.