Context Sensitive Help in RH9

[Maury_boy]

Previously we were using Whats This Help made in RH, but after spending hours working with Adobe support staff, we found that What's This Help made in RH are not compatible with 64bit systems. (Adobe support staff has stated this to be the case.)

We need to learn about other ways of making Context Sensitive Helps using RH9. The easiest way is using the .chm file to create topic-level CSH, but our proprietary program that it will be used with is really huge and the development team can't spare the time to work Map IDs  and so on.

Maybe someone knows about other options and can make a few suggestions.

Thank you

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

I do understand how reluctant developers can be to work with this. But I might think that if they had set up for "What's This" help, they have most of what is needed done already. After all, doesn't that require a unique mapping to nearly every field on a dialog?

One approach would be to map each dialog to a topic. Then describe the individual fields in the topic. If you used heading levels coupled with a Mini TOC, it should be pretty straightforward.

Another thing to ask the developers is if the app is running in 64 bit or 32 bit mode on 64 bit systems. While I'm not a developer, I do work with one and recently saw a note advising that certain things were corrected in his app by forcing it to run in 32 bit mode on 64 bit systems. I'm wondering if they can accomplish that, if it will restore the What's This functionality? Might be worth suggesting.

Cheers... Rick

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[Maury_boy]

Thank you for your input. I'll forward your email to the R&D manager.

Actually, I kept the original email as short as possible, and left out

some history.

We have a completely new Devel. Team (offshore), and they can't spare

the time.

Also, the What's This Helps work in the same 32bit environment, and also

in a 64 bit virtual machine emulation (in 32 bit), but in a native 64

bit environment they don't even show up. 64bit is the new wave and we

have to be able to support that.

We spent hours on the phone with Adobe support on this issue, and until

the very end they assured us that it would work. Finally, their testing

proved that it wouldn't work. Dead end. (Can't fault them. They worked

very hard on the case. That's just the way it goes.)

We just looking for different options

Respectfully,

Joe Lacey

Technical Writer

Amada America, Inc.

Buena Park, CA