Help: Components of Help

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The help subsystem in the MFC framework has the following components, many of which are supplied by AppWizard when you choose its Context-Sensitive Help option:

• A Help drop-down menu with several commands. For a new MDI application, there are two copies of this menu: one for an application with no open documents and one for each type of document that uses its own menu structure. AppWizard supplies these menus.
  
  
• Several message-map entries in your CWinApp-derived application class. These entries bind F1 and SHIFT+F1 commands to their respective command handlers. AppWizard supplies these message-map entries.
  
  
• Message handlers for F1 and SHIFT+F1. Class CWinApp supplies these handlers, and AppWizard supplies the message-map entries for them.
  
  
• The CWinApp::WinHelp member function, which calls the Windows Help program, WINHELP.EXE.
  
  
• Additional AppWizard support for help, including several help-related files. The files include skeleton .RTF files that contain help entries for the common elements of the Windows user interface, such as the File and Edit menus. You can edit these files to revise the supplied text and add your own application-specific help information.
  
  
• A mechanism and tool for mapping resource and command IDs in your application to “help contexts” in Windows Help. The MakeHm tool is introduced in Using MakeHm.

What do you want to know more about?

• The MFC Help implementation
  
  
• Help support tools
  
  
• Kinds of context-sensitive help
  
  
• OLE support for help
  
  
• Message maps and help commands
  
  
• Help for property sheets
  
  
• Authoring help topics
  
  
• Building your help file
  
  
• Implementing more precise context-sensitivity, such as at the control level rather than the dialog box level