[ALIAS] Section

Syntax

[ALIAS]

context_string=alias context string
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The [ALIAS] section associates one set of context strings with an alternate set of context strings. The alias strings correspond to context strings assigned to topics in the # footnotes of the Help file. This section is optional; however, if it is included, it must precede the [MAP] section in the Help project file.

Parameters

context_string

Specifies the application ID or other context ID that you want to reassign.

alias context string

Specifies the context string that appears in the # footnote of the topic you want Help to recognize. An alias context string has the same form and follows the same conventions as standard context string. That is, it is not case-sensitive and may contain the alphabetic characters A through Z, the numeric characters 0 through 9, and the period (.) and underscore (_) characters.

Comments

Because context strings must be unique for each topic and cannot be used for any other topic in the Help project, the [ALIAS] section provides a way to remap context strings that are no longer used or invalid. For example, suppose the application defines a context ID for each field in a dialog box, but your Help file only provides one topic for all the fields. You can use the [ALIAS] section to map all the application context IDs to your one Help topic. In this way, no matter which field the user has selected in the dialog box, Help will display your Help topic when the user requests context-sensitive Help.

You can also use the [ALIAS] section to combine Help topics without recoding your files. For example, if you create a topic that replaces the information in three other topics, you could manually search through your files for invalid cross-references to the deleted topics. The easier approach, however, would be to use the [ALIAS] section to assign the name of the new topic to the deleted topics.

You can use alias names in the [MAP] section of the Help project file. If you do, however, the [ALIAS] section must precede the [MAP] section.

Example

The following example creates several aliases within an [ALIAS] section:

[ALIAS]
sm_key=key_shrtcuts
cc_key=key_shrtcuts
st_key=key_shrtcuts        ;combined into keyboard shortcuts topic
clskey=us_dlog_bxs
maakey=us_dlog_bxs        ;covered in using dialog boxes topic
chk_key=dlogprts
drp_key=dlogprts
lst_key=dlogprts
opt_key=dlogprts
tbx_key=dlogprts            ;combined into parts of dialog box topic
frmtxt=edittxt
wrptxt=edittxt
seltxt=edittxt                ;covered in editing text topic

See Also

[MAP] Section