Article ID: 45837
Article Last Modified on 11/21/2006
This article was previously published under Q45837
SUMMARY
When using the HELPMAKE utility to create new help screens for QuickBasic Version 4.50, you must use the ":n" command to force the help screen titles to display correctly. If the context string is used as the title, the first character of the title will not be printed.
MORE INFORMATION
There are two methods for specifying a help screen title for customized help screens. Both are valid and work correctly in Quick Pascal 1.00 and later and QuickC 2.00 and later. However, QuickBasic 4.50's help system is slightly older and does not correctly display titles that result from the first method. The two methods are as follows:
Method 1: Using the context string as a title
.context MyHelpContext :l13This method results in a help screen that is 13 lines long, with a title that reads as follows:
HELP: MyHelpContext
QuickBasic incorrectly displays the following:
HELP: yHelpContext
Method 2: Using the ":n" Command to specify a separate title
.context MyFirstHelpContext .context MySecondHelpContext .context MyThirdHelpContext :l13 :n MyHelpContextThis method displays the "HELP: MyHelpContext" screen whenever the user requests information regarding any of the three help contexts listed just above the ":l" command. This is always displayed correctly by QuickBasic (decoding QB45QCK.HLP shows that this is the method that the original programmers always used for QuickBasic).
There is no way to work around this problem, other than to use the ":n" command to specify the title. The actual search mechanism interprets the line correctly (as a context), so it is not possible to alter the context string (by padding an extra character, for example) and still have the help file work properly.
Additional query words: QuickBas
Keywords: KB45837
