Online Help for Uniface Applications
Uniface enables you to retrieve and display help topics, either using the native help system or Uniface help texts.
The preferred approach for most applications is to use the native help system, which enables you to develop online help independently of Uniface and provides a user experience that is consistent with other products. The other approach is to define help texts in Uniface.
To retrieve and display Uniface help texts, you can use the help ProcScript command. This command can also be used to display native help if it is in the form of HTML pages or Microsoft WinHelp help files. As long as the appropriate help files exist and Uniface can locate them, any Uniface application running on this platform can retrieve and display the appropriate help topics.
Uniface needs to know the topic name, the logical filename where it is located (if applicable), and the location of the help file. Logical file names are mapped to actual help files using .ini file settings. This is how Uniface hides the actual help file name and keeps the application code platform-independent. Another .ini file setting is used to specify the location of the help files.
The help trigger can be used to display help that is appropriate to the current context. It is activated by the ^HELP structure editor function (by default, F1 on Windows platforms) and is available for fields and entities.
Help on Windows
The Microsoft Compressed HTML Help (.chm) can be displayed using the help/id ProcScript command to start the Microsoft HTML Help Viewer (hh.exe) with the specified numeric ID.
Microsoft also provides an SDK that enables you to integrate the help more closely into your application. For more information, see msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms670169.aspx.
The WinHelp format (.hlp) can be called using the help/topic and help/keyword ProcScript statements. Although it is an older format, you can download the Windows Help executable for more supported Windows versions from Microsoft Support (support.microsoft.com/kb/917607).
