Assigning Bitmap Locations in the Help Project File

Once you have the bitmaps properly situated in the topic file, you must be sure the Help project file contains the information necessary to access and use them. This section describes the entries in a Help project file that are required to display bitmaps.

When you use bitmap-reference commands to position bitmaps, you must tell the Help compiler where to find the bitmaps. The easiest way to do that is to include a BMROOT option in the [OPTIONS] section of the project file.

Note:

Another way to identify bitmaps is to list the filenames individually in the [BITMAPS] section of your Help project file. This method is not recommended unless you are creating a Help file for Windows Help version 3.0. For more information about the [BITMAPS] section, see Chapter 16, “The Help Project File.”

The BMROOT option lists the paths where you want Windows Help to look for bitmaps positioned by the bmc, bml, and bmr references. You can give absolute paths or paths relative to the directory containing the Help project file. This option has the following syntax:

BMROOT=pathnames

For example, you can create a subdirectory off the main project directory where you keep all the bitmaps:

[OPTIONS]
    .
    .
    .
BMROOT=.\BMP
    .
    .
    .

Assuming the Help project file for the Help file is in the WIN31\HELP directory, this option tells Windows Help to look for bitmaps in the WIN31\HELP\BMP directory.

You can assign more than one path to the BMROOT option; Windows Help searches all the paths, in the order given, for the specified bitmaps. Separate multiple paths with commas. For example:

[OPTIONS]
BMROOT=.\BMP, .\WMF, .\SHG