Writing Help

Microsoft® Windows CE® for the Auto PC provides user Help through visual Help that displays on the screen and voice Help through prerecorded speech or text-to-speech (TTS). Visual Help provides information on using applications and is available by pressing the HELP key on the faceplate. Voice Help provides information on using an application speech commands, and is available by saying What can I say? and Help.

Visual Help and voice Help are context-sensitive only. In visual Help, the context is usually the entire screen, because the screen has no focus to provide a specific context. Visual Help for a context can contain an index of topics, and users can browse available topics.

In voice Help, the context is the active speech commands. Voice Help has two parts: long voice Help, which provides task-based information on speech commands, and short voice Help, which provides a list of available speech commands. Windows CE for the Auto PC builds short voice Help automatically from prerecorded speech templates you install for the active speech commands for your application. You must provide long voice Help strings for each available application speech command. Windows CE for the Auto PC reads the strings for the active speech commands when the user requests long voice Help.

To provide visual Help for your application, you must create visual Help files, then provide function calls to these files for each form that requires Help. To provide voice Help for your application, you must create long voice Help strings for each speech command available in your application and include them in your application’s resource files.