Localizing Online Help

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

For classes with online help files, the Lexicon qualifier can be used to retrieve the appropriate HTML page or Microsoft Help file. The help source is represented by an instance of the system class __HelpSource, defined as follows:

class __HelpSource
{
    [key] string GUID;
    [key] string SourceLocale;
    [key] string TargetLocale;

    string HelpType;
    string HelpSource 

    string Keywords[]; 
    string Contexts[];
};
 

The __HelpSource class is generic enough to be mapped to either Microsoft® Win32® Help or HTML-based Help. For Win32 Help, the HelpType property is set to "Win32" and the HelpSource property points to the help file for the locale specified in the TargetLocale property. For HTML-based Help, HelpType is set to "HTML" and HelpSource points to a URL for the appropriate World Wide Web page.

If there are specific help context values for keywords that apply to the class or its properties, the keywords are specified in the Keywords property and their associated context values in the Contexts property.

The same Lexicon qualifier used for class localization is also used for online Help.

To map this class to Win32 online Help, the following hypothetical instance of __HelpSource is created:

Instance of __HelpSource
{
    GUID = "{e588652-edb5-11d0-00c04fb68820}";
    SourceLocale = "ms\\0x409";
    TargetLocale = "ms\\0x409";

    HelpType = "WIN32";
    HelpSource = "C:\\HELP\\MyClass.HLP";

    Keywords = { "MyClass", "Tree", "Dog", "Pencil" };

    Contexts = { "100", "101", "102", "103"; }    // Help context ids
};