Just as some books include multiple indexes, Help supports multiple keyword indexes. The additional keyword indexes enable an application to look up information that is defined in alternate, custom keyword indexes. For example, you can create a general index for all subjects in the Help file and create specialized indexes for more narrowly defined areas. If your application includes embedded functions, you can use a second keyword index to enable users to get context-sensitive Help on the function calls included in the parent application. Or, if your application competes in the marketplace with another popular program, you can use an additional keyword index for the competitor’s product. Users familiar with keywords from the competitor’s application can find matching keywords in your application’s Help file.
Creating additional keyword indexes is a two-part process. First, the MULTIKEY option must be placed in the [OPTIONS] section of the Help project file, as in this example:
[OPTIONS]
MULTIKEY=LNote:
Be sure to limit your multikey index footnotes to one case, usually uppercase. In this example, topics with the footnote L would have their keywords incorporated into the additional keyword index, whereas those assigned the lowercase letter l would not. We recommend using uppercase letters over lowercase letters. (See the MULTIKEY option in Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”)
Second, the topics to be associated with the additional keyword index must be written and assigned footnotes using the letter specified in the MULTIKEY option. Multikey footnotes can be placed either at the beginning of the topic or elsewhere if you want to create multikey spot references.
To assign a multikey keyword to a topic
1.1.Place the insertion point at the beginning of the topic text or wherever you want to define the keyword.
A keyword inserted anywhere except the beginning of the topic is treated as a spot reference.
2.2.From the Insert menu, choose Footnote.
3.3.Type the uppercase letter used in the MULTIKEY option as the custom footnote mark, and then choose OK.
A superscript letter appears in the topic, and the insertion point moves to the footnote window.
4.4.Type the keyword(s) to the right of the letter in the footnote window.
Use only a single space between the footnote character and the first keyword. Separate multiple keywords with a semicolon (;). Figure 6.10 shows a sample multikey footnote entry.
When assigning multikey keywords to topics, be sure to associate only one topic with a multikey keyword. Help does not display the standard Search dialog box for a multikey keyword search. Instead, it displays the first topic found with the specified keyword. If you want the topics in your additional keyword index to appear in the Search dialog box, you must specify a K footnote for the topics.
If Help cannot find the multikey keyword in the alternate keyword index, Help displays a default topic that contains the keyword “Default Topic,” or it displays the “Help topic not found” error message if it cannot find the default topic.
An application can display a Help topic that contains a multikey footnote. For information on the parameters passed by the application to Help, see the “Searching for Help with Keywords” section in Chapter 19, “The WinHelp API.”