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wxHelpController

This is a family of classes by which applications may invoke a help viewer to provide on-line help.

A help controller allows an application to display help, at the contents or at a particular topic, and shut the help program down on termination. This avoids proliferation of many instances of the help viewer whenever the user requests a different topic via the application's menus or buttons.

Typically, an application will create a help controller instance when it starts, and immediately call Initialize to associate a filename with it. The help viewer will only get run, however, just before the first call to display something.

Although all help controller classes actually derive from wxHelpControllerBase and have names of the form wxXXXHelpController, the appropriate class is aliased to the name wxHelpController for each platform.

There are currently the following help controller classes defined:

Derived from

wxHelpControllerBase
wxObject

Include files

<wx/help.h> (wxWindows chooses the appropriate help controller class)
<wx/helpbase.h> (wxHelpControllerBase class)
<wx/helpwin.h> (Windows Help controller)
<wx/generic/helpext.h> (external HTML browser controller) <wx/generic/helpxlp.h> (wxHelp controller)

Members

wxHelpController::wxHelpController
wxHelpController::~wxHelpController
wxHelpController::Initialize
wxHelpController::DisplayBlock
wxHelpController::DisplayContents
wxHelpController::DisplaySection
wxHelpController::KeywordSearch
wxHelpController::LoadFile
wxHelpController::SetViewer
wxHelpController::OnQuit
wxHelpController::Quit


wxHelpController::wxHelpController

wxHelpController()

Constructs a help instance object, but does not invoke the help viewer.


wxHelpController::~wxHelpController

~wxHelpController()

Destroys the help instance, closing down the viewer if it is running.


wxHelpController::Initialize

virtual void Initialize(const wxString& file)

virtual void Initialize(const wxString& file, int server)

Initializes the help instance with a help filename, and optionally a server (socket) number if using wxHelp. Does not invoke the help viewer. This must be called directly after the help instance object is created and before any attempts to communicate with the viewer.

You may omit the file extension and a suitable one will be chosen.


wxHelpController::DisplayBlock

virtual bool DisplayBlock(long blockNo)

If the help viewer is not running, runs it and displays the file at the given block number.

wxHelp: this is the wxHelp block number.

WinHelp: Refers to the context number.

External HTML help: the same as for wxHelpController::DisplaySection.


wxHelpController::DisplayContents

virtual bool DisplayContents()

If the help viewer is not running, runs it and displays the contents.


wxHelpController::DisplaySection

virtual bool DisplaySection(int sectionNo)

If the help viewer is not running, runs it and displays the given section.

wxHelp: Sections are numbered starting from 1. Section numbers may be viewed by running wxHelp in edit mode.

WinHelp: sectionNo is a context id.

External HTML help: wxExtHelpController implements sectionNo as an id in a map file, which is of the form:

0  wx.html             ; Index
1  wx34.html#classref  ; Class reference
2  wx204.html          ; Function reference

wxHelpController::KeywordSearch

virtual bool KeywordSearch(const wxString& keyWord)

If the help viewer is not running, runs it, and searches for sections matching the given keyword. If one match is found, the file is displayed at this section.

wxHelp: If more than one match is found, the Search dialog is displayed with the matches.

WinHelp: If more than one match is found, the first topic is displayed.

External HTML help: If more than one match is found, a choice of topics is displayed.


wxHelpController::LoadFile

virtual bool LoadFile(const wxString& file = "")

If the help viewer is not running, runs it and loads the given file. If the filename is not supplied or is NULL, the file specified in Initialize is used. If the viewer is already displaying the specified file, it will not be reloaded. This member function may be used before each display call in case the user has opened another file.


wxHelpController::SetViewer

virtual void SetViewer(const wxString& viewer, long flags)

Sets detailed viewer information. So far this is only relevant to wxExtHelpController.

Parameters

viewer

flags


wxHelpController::OnQuit

virtual bool OnQuit()

Overridable member called when this application's viewer is quit by the user.

This does not work for all help controllers.


wxHelpController::Quit

virtual bool Quit()

If the viewer is running, quits it by disconnecting.

For Windows Help, the viewer will only close if no other application is using it.