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From: Jim Carlock on 9 Apr 2006 16:46
I'm going through things and messing with Windows Help files.

I'm specifically messing with opening help files and jumping to
topics. There are two problems I'm currently running into. The
first appears to be a SciTE problem. The second involves
searching for some better help files ( either Windows [.hlp] files
or Compiled Help Metafiles [.chm] ).

There is a forum for SciTE questions, and it ends up where I'll
probably go, but if anyone else here is using Scintilla/SciTE, I'd
greatly appreciate your comments.

(1) Problem #1

Inside a SciTE properties file, "asm.properties", which contains
two lines:

<asm.properties>
....
# The following line works for the WIN32.HLP file. The WIN32.HLP file doesn't contain any OPTION keyword though.
# command.help.$(file.patterns.asm)="C:\WINDOWS\winhlp32.exe" -K $(CurrentWord) "C:\masm32\help\WIN32.HLP"
command.help.$(file.patterns.asm)="C:\WINDOWS\winhlp32.exe" -K $(CurrentWord) "C:\masm32\help\masm32.hlp"
command.help.$(file.patterns.asm).subsystem=5
....
</asm.properties>

Lines that start with # are comments.

Line #2 works swell when I uncomment the line.
Line #3 fails and presents the following error message:

<Windows Help dialog>

Cannot find the -K OPTION "C:\masm32\help\MASM32.HLP file.
Do you want to try to find this file yourself?

</Windows Help dialog>

And I'm almost 100% certain that this problem is a SciTE problem,
because I get the command-line to work fine...

<cmd.exe prompt>
"C:\WINDOWS\winhlp32.exe" -K $(CurrentWord) "C:\masm32\help\masm32.hlp"
</cmd.exe prompt>

The syntax above opens the masm32.hlp file, but masm32.hlp
presents the following message:

The topic does not exist. Contact your application vendor for
an updated Help file. (129)

This leads us to directly into problem number (2), which is more
oriented towards this group.

(2) Problem #2

Help files... Anyone have any other suggestions for help files,
either .chm or .hlp whereby when someone wants help with
OPTION, they can type in the command above and get a
full help on such a command?

I see that masm32.hlp provides help topics that are close to
what I'm looking for, as I can search through the index of
that particular file and get to a variety of OPTION directives.

OPTION CASEMAP
OPTION DOTNAME
OPTION EMULATOR
OPTION EXPR16
OPTION LANGUAGE
OPTION LJMP
OPTION NOKEYWORD
OPTION NOSIGNEXTEND
OPTION OFFSET
OPTION PROC
OPTION PROLOGUE
OPTION READONLY
OPTION SCOPED
OPTION SEGMENT

When I take a look at OPTION EMULATOR I see masm32.hlp
lists two items under it's sytax:

OPTION EMULATOR
OPTION NOEMULATOR

And the OPTION NOEMULATOR doesn't appear in the index.

So Problem #2 actually involves two problems.

(2a) There is no OPTION keyword.
(2b) Some keywords (eg, OPTION NOEMULATOR) are
missing,

"C:\WINDOWS\winhlp32.exe" -K NOEMULATOR "C:\masm32\help\masm32.hlp"

turns up an error dialog indicating the keyword was not found.

Personally, I prefer .chm files over .hlp files, so if anyone knows
of a better help file, that would be great. If anyone is currently
working on such a project and wants some help with it, let me
know.

Thanks much for your time and help.

Jim Carlock
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