.HTX File Format ================ The help file format consists of 'pages' of ascii help text separated by help directives. Help text contains the text as it is to be displayed in the help window together with embedded 'meta-characters' to indicate highlighted titles and (user selectable) links to other help pages. Help page text must be less than or equal to 65 characters wide and 18 lines deep. Help directives are placed on seperate lines between each help page and are identified by a '!' character in the first column in the line. Types of directive include the following ! Label: This defines a label for the following help page that can act as the destination for the help link 'Label'. ! Label1=Label2 This defines an 'alias' for a help label causing links to 'Label1' to be directed to 'Label2'. These aliases can be redefined within the help file. This allows text links with the same name to reference different pages. ! $case=off This defines that the help text is to be accessed in a case insensitive manner (e.g. for the language Pascal). This directive must appear at the top of the file and is global to that help file. ! $chain=filename This directive defines which helpfile to search if the key word is not found in the current helpfile. There can only be one chain file for each help file and it is global to the entire file. example: ! $chain=tsc.hlp ! Label>ExtFile|ExtLabel This defines that the destination label 'Label' is not within the current file but is located in the help file 'ExtFile'. Following the help link 'Label' will automatically load the help file 'ExtFile' and display the page with the label 'ExtLabel' ! Null directive; This seperates pages of multi-page help text that can be displayed by Page Down and cannot be accessed directly from a page link. Multiple labels can be placed on a single help page allowing more than one text link to point to that page. Multiple directives can be put on a single line by seperating the commands by commas. eg !va_arg:, va_start:, va_end: There are 3 sets of meta-character brackets that can be placed (in pairs) in the help text. These can be inserted in text by pressing Ctrl-P followed by the character. Note the TopSpeed editor has built in highlighted display of text within these characters to make editing help text easier (to turn this off you can use Ctrl O C). The meta-characters are: Highlight: CHAR(3) text CHAR(3) (  text  ) This caues the text within the brackets to be highlighted and is used for help page titles. The meta-characters are deleted from the displayed text. Link: CHAR(2) label CHAR(2) ( label ) This sets up a 'text-link' which allows the user to move to the page specified by the label (spaces are not significant but case is significant) by selecting this link. The label is displayed in inverse (or high-inverse when the help cursor is on this link). The meta-characters are deleted. Ú a line containing only CHAR(218) starts defining a box the width of the page that can be used to surround a title. À a line containing only CHAR(192) finishes defining the box A short example help page -------------------------- ! free:, alloc:, _heapset=heapinternal Ú void free(void *buffer); À header file : alloc.h source file : alloc.a The function free deallocates the block of memory buffer previously allocated by malloc, calloc or realloc. The number of bytes freed is that specified by the preceding call to malloc, calloc or realloc. Related Functions : calloc,_heapchk,_heapset,malloc,realloc