Providing online help for
developers
You can provide your own online help for your user-defined
functions, user events, and user objects into the PowerBuilder development
environment.
How context-sensitive help for user-defined
functions works
When you select the name of a function or place the cursor in the
function name in the Script view and press Shift + F1:
-
PowerBuilder looks for the standard prefix (the default is uf_)
in the function name. -
If the standard prefix is found, PowerBuilder looks for the help
topic in the help file containing your user-defined function help
topics (instead of looking in PBUSR.CHM, its own main help file).
The default file name for help on user-defined functions is
PBUSR.CHM.PowerBuilder determines the name of the help file to look in by
reading the UserHelpFile variable in PB.INI. For information on
changing the value of this variable, see Advanced
procedures. -
If PowerBuilder finds the variable, it looks in the specified
help file for the name of the selected function. If there is no
UserHelpFile variable in PB.INI, PowerBuilder looks for the keyword in
the PBUSR.CHM file in the PowerBuilder Help directory.
Simplest approach
If you work within the PowerBuilder defaults:
-
Compile all of your online help for your user-defined functions,
user events, and user objects into a single file named
PBUSR.CHM -
Prefix the name of each user-defined function you create with
uf_ (for example, uf_calculate)
Basic procedures
Here are details on how to build online help into the PowerBuilder
environment.
To create context-sensitive help for user-defined
functions:
-
When you create a user-defined function, give the name of the
function a standard prefix. The default prefix is uf_ (for example,
uf_calculate). -
For each user-defined function help topic, assign a search
keyword (a K footnote entry) identical to the function name.For example, in the help topic for the user-defined function
uf_CutBait, create a keyword footnote uf_CutBait. PowerBuilder uses
the keyword to locate the correct topic to display in the help
window. -
Compile the help file and save it in the PowerBuilder Help
directory.
Advanced
procedures
You can specify a different file name for context-sensitive
help:
To specify a different file name for context-sensitive
help:
-
Open your PB.INI file in a text editor.
-
In the [PB] section, add a UserHelpFile variable, specifying the
name of the help file that contains your context-sensitive topics.
Your help file must be in the PowerBuilder Help directory. The format
of the variable is:1UserHelpFile = helpfile.chmSpecify only the file name. A full path name designation will
not be recognized.
You can change the prefix of your user-defined functions:
To use a different prefix for user-defined functions:
-
Open your PB.INI file in a text editor.
-
In the [PB] section, add a UserHelpPrefix variable, specifying
the value of your prefix. Use this format:1UserHelpPrefix = yourprefix_The prefix must end with an underscore character.