Form and Dialog Box Help

You can specify the appID and help symbol for forms and dialog boxes in two ways:

• By specifying the g_help argument of hiCreateAppForm() or hiDisplayAppDBox() when you create the form or dialog box
  If you want to set the appID only, specify a single string or symbol as the value of g_help. This sets the hiHelpAppName property.
  If you want to set both the appID and the help symbol, specify a list of two strings or symbols as the value of g_help. The first element in the list sets the hiHelpAppName property and the second element sets the hiHelpSymName property.
  If you want to specify the help symbol only, specify a list of two strings or symbols as the value of g_help, with nil as the first element of the list and the help symbol as the second element. This sets the hiHelpSymName property without setting the hiHelpAppName property.
• By attaching the hiHelpAppName and hiHelpSymName properties to the symbol that represents the form name or dialog box name, after the form or dialog box is created
  For example:

     putprop(’formSymbol ’propValue ’hiHelpAppName)

     putprop(’formSymbol ’propValue ’hiHelpSymName)

  You can also specify nil as the property value to clear any previously-set properties.

When a user clicks Help, hiHelp() is called. hiHelp() first checks for the hiHelpSymName and hiHelpAppName and properties. If hiHelpSymName is set, its value is used as the help symbol, otherwise hiHelp() uses the form name or dialog box name as the help symbol.

If hiHelpAppName is set, its value is used as the appID. If hiHelpAppName is not set or its value is nil, hiHelp() calls hiGetAppType() to get the application name of the current window, which it uses as the appID. If the application name on the current window is nil, hiHelp() uses dfii as the appID.

When multiple applications share forms and dialog boxes or when applications are encapsulated, you cannot rely on hiGetAppType() to return the correct application name. Therefore, you should set hiHelpAppName for all forms and dialog boxes. If one application sets this property, all other applications that share the form or dialog box should also set this property or assign it to nil before displaying the form or dialog box.

You need to set a specific set of properties to open a document in the Task Assistant interface instead of Doc Assistant.

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