To create hypergraphics you use Hotspot Editor, an application that lets you open any standard Windows bitmap or metafile and add hot spots to it. You can then save the bitmap in hypergraphic format, with the picture and hot spots combined. Using Hotspot Editor, you can define hot spots that link to other Help topics and graphics, that execute a Help macro, or that access multimedia events (if provided for by external DLLs). After you create a hypergraphic and save it with Hotspot Editor, you can add it to Help topics exactly like any other bitmap. The only restriction is that hypergraphic files produced by Hotspot Editor must be included by reference using the bmc, bmr, or bml format. (For an explanation of these formats, see Chapter 10, “Adding Graphics.”)
Although you can create similar effects in the Help file by carefully creating and positioning several individual bitmaps next to each other and formatting each of them as hot spots, Hotspot Editor is more efficient and much easier to use. Using several bitmaps to simulate a single-image hypergraphic also has the drawback of requiring Help to perform multiple locating operations when displaying the topic. Usually this means Help must read the disk several times, slowing overall performance, especially on CD-ROM.
If you are creating a 3.0 Help file, you cannot use Hotspot Editor. In that case, see “Creating Hypergraphics Without Hotspot Editor,” later in this chapter.