All applications in the CASEVision environment provide assistance through the On-Line Help facility. On-Line Help information is organized into a hierarchical tree made up of help cards. A help card provides information on a specific topic, such as a feature in a window or a command. You read help cards in the Help Viewer window. You can peruse the Help topics available in the Help Browser window, arranged in the Help hierarchy, by alphabetical index, or graphically.
This chapter covers the following topics:
If you need help in an application in the CASEVision, you have three options for requesting it:
Use the Help menu (located at the far right of the menu bar in CASEVision tools)
Click the Help button (in windows where there is no Help menu)
Press the <F1> key while the cursor rests on the area of a CASEVision window for which you want information
When you ask for help directly, the Help Viewer window appears displaying text explaining a feature or overview of a tool. If you ask for the Help index, the Help Browser window appears, showing the full structure of available help so you can navigate easily through Help topics to the information you need.
After requesting help about a subject, you can navigate up or down the hierarchy to adjacent topics for additional information. Since the On-Line Help utility is intended to complement paper documentation, you should also refer to the appropriate user's guide.
The Help menu in a CASEVision tool has four commands, as shown in Figure 2-1. The menu provides these options:
| “On Version...” |
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| “On Window...” |
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| “On Context...” |
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| “Index...” |
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The first selection, “On Version...”, doesn't start On-Line Help but instead opens a small dialog box that gives information about the program name and version. The other three commands do start On-Line Help.
As a general rule, select “On Window...” if you are new to the use of this window. It brings you into the Help system at the window overview level. Use “On Context” if you have a general idea of the window's purpose, but are not familiar with a particular feature. Use “Index...” if you want to view the list of topics prior to making your selection.
Certain CASEVision dialog boxes and windows (such as File Browsers or the Help Viewer itself) have no menu bar and offer help through a Help button instead. Clicking the Help button opens a Help Viewer with window-level information displayed.
Like the “On Context” command of the Help menu, the <F1> key offers context-sensitive help; in addition, it provides information about menu commands. To use it, move the cursor over any feature for which you want information; then press the <F1> key. A help Viewer opens (if none is already open) with information about that feature. The <F1> key is an excellent way to get information about menu items: click once on a menu to open it, then move the cursor over the menu item you want, and press <F1> to see information about it.
The Help Viewer window displays information in help cards, which appear one per topic. A typical Help Viewer appears in Figure 2-5.
The Help Viewer has three major areas:
Help card display area
Topic list
Help Viewer control area
The help card display area presents the information on the selected topic. If you can't see the full text of a card in the window, you can use the scroll bars to reveal the missing text.
The topic list displays either the immediate subtopics below the current card or the previous help cards you have accessed, depending on whether the List subtopics button or List history button is toggled. You can access topics from the list by double-clicking them.
The Help Viewer control area provides these controls:
When the Help Viewer is displayed, pressing <F1> changes the Viewer to the new topic selected.
You can open more than one Help Viewer by clicking the Copy button in a Help Viewer window. This opens a copy of the current Help Viewer window that displays the same Help topic. You can then look for new Help information in one window while the other window displays the initial information - a useful way to keep an important help card constantly visible as you browse through other Help topics.
When you open multiple Help Viewers, only one Viewer at a time can be the active Viewer. The active Viewer is the one that responds to outside requests for a new topic such as pressing <F1> in another window. You can tell which Viewer is active: the Active Viewer button next to the topic list is turned on, and the controls at the bottom of the window are outlined in red. Inactive Viewers have controls outlined in blue, and the Active Viewer button is turned off. (Note: if you do not Lascaux, the default color scheme, these two colors may be different.)
To change an inactive Viewer to the active Viewer, click its Active Viewer button to turn it on. Simply moving to an inactive Viewer and changing topics internally with its topic list won't activate the Viewer.
If you want to browse through topics in On-Line Help, use the Help Browser. You can open the Browser by choosing “Index...” from the Help menu in a CASEVision tool or by clicking the Browser button in any Help Viewer window. The Browser's display area shows the hierarchy of Help topics available for CASEVision, which you can look at in any one of three views:
Topic Hierarchy shows the Help topics in outline form; higher level topics appear closer to the left side of the display, subtopics are indented to the right under their parent topics. See Figure 2-6.
Topic Index lists Help topics in alphabetical order beneath each tool. See Figure 2-7.
Graphical presents Help topics in a branching tree as shown in Figure 2-8. Each Help topic is a node in the tree, and each connection between a topic and a subtopic is an arc.
To choose a view, click the appropriate button in the bottom left corner of the Browser window. Use the vertical scroll bar to scroll up and down through the topics in all three views. Use the horizontal scroll bar to scroll left and right through the topic tree.
Each mode has a topic display area, a Help Browser control area (for switching modes), and a display control area specific to the mode.
You can request a Help Card from the Help Browser by double-clicking it or by selecting it and clicking the View button.(Note that there is no View button in Graphical mode.) This displays the information in the active Viewer or displays a new Viewer if none is available. The active/inactive status of any concurrent Help Viewers is indicated in the Help Browser. The Help Browser displays the active Viewer in red; any inactive Viewers are shown in blue.
In either of the two text views (Topic Hierarchy or Topic Index), you can search for a topic by entering a search string in the Search field below the display area. The Search field uses an incremental search; as you enter characters, the Browser searches the list of topics from the top to bottom to match what you've typed so far. It selects the topic where it finds the match and scrolls the display area to show the topic. Each time you press <Enter> after you've typed search text, the Browser moves on to the next topic containing the search text. To view the found topic, double-click it or click the View button.
If you want to view only a restricted set of subtopics in the Topic Hierarchy view, you can set the scope of the view: Click on the general topic you want to view, then click the Set Scope button below the display area. The topic at the top of the scope is displayed in purple, as shown in Figure 2-7. The Browser restricts the scope of the hierarchy to the selected topic, its subtopics, and subtopics below that. This feature is useful for viewing information limited to a specific tool or window, for example.
To set the scope farther back up the topic hierarchy, click the Expand button; The scope moves up to the parent topic of the highest level topic in the display area and displays the subtopics of the parent topic.
The Browser's graphical view of topics and graph controls (see Figure 2-8) are used in other CASEVision applications. Because these are standard controls common to the other CASEVision tools, two of the buttons (Multiple Arcs and Realign) are not functional here, since they don't apply to the topic tree in the Browser. For more information, see Chapter 5, “Graphical Views in the CASEVision Environment.”
This tutorial starts by getting help from the Help menu in any CASEVision tool and takes you through a series of exercises highlighting the major features of On-line Help.
Start any CASEVision tool and select “On Version...” from the Help menu
A dialog box displays identifying the application, operating system, and release information.
Click OK to close the Version dialog box.
Select “On Window...” from the Help menu.
The Help Viewer displays, containing a summary description of the current window.
Select “On Context” from the Help menu, position the cursor (now in the form of a question mark) over some feature in the window, and click.
The Help Viewer topic display switches to the feature you have selected.
Select “Index...” from the Help menu.
The Help Browser window displays. This demonstrates how to access Help Browser from the Help menu. Let's close the Help Browser for now and re-open later from the Help Viewer.
Click the Close button in Help Browser.
Click the Help button in the Help Viewer.
The Help Viewer displays the Help on Help topic, which is appropriate for this demonstration. Figure 2-9.
Click List History.
The previous topics you accessed are listed in the topic list area at the lower left of the Help Viewer. This is useful if you need to return to a previously accessed topic. You can also click the Recent button to return to a prior topic.
Click List Subtopics.
The topics subordinate to the current help card display.
Double-click the topic called Requesting Help in the topic display.
The text for this topic displays in the Help Viewer. Its only subtopic, Help Menu, appears in the topic display.
Click the Browser button
The Help Browser window displays in hierarchy mode with Requesting Help in red because it is the active Viewer topic. See Figure 2-10.
Click the Graphical button in the Help Browser.
The topic display changes to graphical mode with topics shown as labeled rectangles in a hierarchy. You can experiment with the graph controls to see the effects. Remember that Multiple Arcs and Realign, the fourth and fifth buttons from the left, are not enabled in Help Browser.
Click the Copy button in Help Viewer.
A duplicate Help Viewer is created displaying the same topic.
Double-click any subtopic in the Help Viewer topic display.
The selected topic displays. This is a useful technique for keeping a topic displayed while examining new topics. The blue-highlighted Help Viewer is inactive; the red one is active.
Click the Close button in each of the open Help windows to end this tutorial.
