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>From info-mcl-owner  Tue Feb 28 19:21:53 1995
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Date: Tue, 28 Feb 1995 23:44:40 +0000
To: info-mcl@digitool.com
From: Dimitri Simos <dim@lissys.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Balloon Help Woes
Message-ID:  <9502282345.aa20169@post.demon.co.uk>

         * apologies if you get multiple copies of this *
         * some of my e-mail to info-mcl is bouncing/disappearing *


I'm having problems with the balloon help in the
"help-manager" file in the MCL library folder.


A.)  In order to implement balloons for my stand-alone application,
(which is distributed without the "MCL Help" file) I need to 
persuade MCL *not* to try and look for the help file. 

However, MCL inevitably presents a dialog saying that the help file
could not be found, and would I like to help it look for it...

I tried (in blithe ignorance) playing with the following:

(defmethod help-resource-file ((a application))
  (get-doc-string-file t))

and changed it to:

(defmethod help-resource-file ((a application))
  (get-doc-string-file nil)) ;; haven't the foggiest idea what the arg is...

and to:

(defmethod help-resource-file ((a application))
  nil)

This seems to work, it shuts MCL up insofar as menus and menu items
are concerned, so I can implement my own help-string methods for these.
*However*, if I invoke the built-in "Search.." dialog (which I need in my 
application) and try balloon help on that, I get this error:

> Error: Malformed help-spec: 12081
> While executing: CCL::RESOLVE-RESTYPE

I think I've partly traced this to the function  help-tehandle  being
passed a number such as 12081 when it expects a string. But I don't
really understand the low-level code. How can I avoid such errors?
Am I doing a boo-boo by playing with the help-resource-file method?


There are also a couple of other Weird Things, namely:

B.) The descenders are sometimes missing in the help strings. (This seems to 
occur only if balloons are activated for the first time while a modal dialog 
is active on screen). I thought a similar problem had been fixed in 
the past..?


C.) Under system 7.5 only, ballon help will *only* work on the first two 
menu items of any given menu. Just to make things more exciting, 
the balloons for any remaining menu items will sometimes flash on *very* 
briefly just as the cursor *exits* the menu item! 
This problem definitely did not occur with my old system 7.0.1!



It seems that balloon help may need some updating..?
Thanks for any help about help!

--

Dimitri Simos                               dim@lissys.demon.co.uk
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Lissys Ltd.                 Tel.(Voice & Fax): UK (+44) 509 235620