Copyright: ® Roger Hadgraft, 1993


A Tutorial in using Doctor Help files

This Tutorial describes how to read Help files created by Doctor Help. These Help files contain a few additonal features compared to most Windows Help files that you've seen, and a few minutes spent reading this short guide will save you many times that amount of time later.

Click on [image] to see the first topic. You can click on [image] at any time to return to here.

Click on Advanced Features if you are an experienced user of Help files, or Review to see a review of the tutorial.

Return to my original Help file

Standard Windows Help files

Basic Reading Methods

Advanced Features

Review

More information

Doctor Help


Standard Windows Help files

There is already a Help file that tells you how to read normal Windows Help files, but this Tutorial should give you much of the same information. If you want to read that file now, click below. When you're finished, click on the Back or History buttons to return to this file.

Standard Windows Help


Basic Reading Methods

How can you read one of these files? There are a number of approaches you can take, and you can mix and match them all together. The topics below are the topics which we'll visit during this tutorial. You can select any one of them, or just press the [image] button to move to the next screen.

Turning the Page

Intermediate Tables of Contents & Up or Menu

Keyword Search

Cross References & Back

Backtracking - Back & History

Popups

Hotspots

Cursor shape

Up button

Menu button

Contents button


Turning the Page

You can read the entire file by clicking on the  [image] button. This is just like turning the page in a book. You can go back through the file with the [image] button. This is a standard feature of Doctor Help files.

You may have found in other Help files that the browse sequence is either not implemented, or that a browse sequence only covers a part of any one file. Doctor Help implements a feature as close as possible to what we are all used to.


Intermediate Tables of Contents & Up or Menu

At each level in the file, you will see a Table of Contents for the subsidiary sections. (There was one for Basic Reading Methods. Click on Menu or Up to see it).

You can click on any one of these topics (hotspots), and read it, then press the [image] button or [image] button to return to the menu. You can then choose another topic from that menu. (It is possible that both Up and Menu have not been used in your help file, although they are in this one).

Of course, you can combine this menu-oriented choice of topics with the page turning mode, and choose a topic from a menu, then continue reading page by page using the [image] button.


Keyword Search

If you want information on a particular topic, click on the [image] button. A dialog box allows you to scroll through the list of defined keywords, or if you want to search for a particular word, start typing it in the box available:

 and the nearest word will appear. If you match a particular word, then click on the [image] button to see all the topics for that word, then double click on whichever topic seems most appropriate, or single click on the topic and press the [image] button.


Cross References & Back

In many places in Doctor Help files, you will find hotspots - like "Doctor Help" above. These are of a different colour and underlined like this: . Click on one of these and you activate a cross reference to another part of the current file or to another file.

To backtrack, just click on the [image] button. In fact, clicking on topics in the menus that you see are the same type of operation.

Well constructed Help files have many such connections to help you find and retrieve, related information. Just be careful not to get too carried away following some of these tangents, because you might get "lost". (But you can always use the Back and History buttons to get back where you were).


Backtracking - Back & History

Since these files are made up of a series of links between the topics, you can backtrack using two methods:

The [image] button takes you back to the previous topic. Click on it again for the one before that and so on. The last 50 topics are kept in a list.

Using the [image] command you can jump back to any one of the previous 50 topics by scrolling through the list of topics and double clicking on the topic of interest. If you have jumped to other help files in the process, you will see the filename added to the topic name in capitals, eg.


Popups

Another style of hotspot is the popup, indicated by dashed underlining like this: . These are most frequently used by authors to provide definitions and other short explanations, and are similar to footnotes in normal texts. They popup in a small window over the top of the current window. Just click anywhere to make the window go away. Click on hotspot above to see how this works.

Doctor Help uses popups for some intermediate menus. When an author defines a cross reference, there are sometimes several targets for the jump (what's called an ambiguous cross reference). In such a case, a table of targets is built, from which you, the reader can select. To select none, simply click anywhere other than inside the popup window.


Hotspots

Hotspots are fundamental to navigation in hypertext systems like Windows Help. They are areas on the screen on which you click with the mouse, transporting you to another topic. Hotspots can be either text (in which case they are visually different from the surrounding text) or graphics. See also Cursor shape.

You can backtrack from the current topic which you have accessed via a hotspot by using the Back, History, Contents, Up and Menu buttons.


Cursor shape

When you move the cursor over a hotspot, it will change shape to a hand with a pointing finger. Most of the time, you won't need this visual cue, because text hotspots are underlined, and of a different colour.

However, graphical hotspots don't have any visual cues - no underlining, and no change of colour, so you have to rely on the cursor indicating which of them is a hotspot. Very often authors will indicate this by giving some instructions to that effect, eg: "You can click on a term on the following diagram."


Up button

To specially support the hierarchical structure of most files, the [image] button allows you to jump back to the last topic you visited at the previous level. You can keep going upwards until you reach the Contents page.

Occasionally you may get a "Help topic does not exist" message. This happens because you have skipped a level in the hierarchy, and the Up macro is trying to take you up one level rather than two. At some future time it may be possible to overcome this limitation.


Menu button

The Menu button is similar to the Up button, except that it takes you to the current topic's parent topic, which is usually some form of menu. If you have followed a cross reference that has jumped to a different sub-hierarchy, Menu will take you to a topic that you may not have seen before, whereas Up always backtracks via topics you have already visitied.

It is up to authors to decide which (or both) of Up and Menu that they provide in their help files. Hopefully they will provide you with both, and you will find each useful in its own way.


Contents button

The [image] button takes you back to the highest level Table of Contents. This is useful if you get lost. It will show you the top level menu.


Advanced Features

There are a few other things which are useful to know about, namely bookmarks, copying, printing, and annotating. Click on any one of these, or [image] to read them in order.

Bookmarks

Annotate

Copy and Copy Topic

Print


Bookmarks

If you want to be able to return to a particular point in a file, just set a bookmark by using Bookmark/Define... You can come back to that point by clicking on [image] in the menu and choosing the bookmark that you want. (Authors could add a Bookmark button if they wished).


Annotate

All Windows Help files have a standard Annotate facility (available in the [image] menu) that allows you to attach notes to any topic within the Help file. An [image] button has been added to the toolbar to make access to this feature more convenient.

These notes are stored in a file with the same name as the Help file but with an ANN extension. For example, if you annotate this file, you will get DRHLPUSR.ANN in your Windows directory.

Each topic that has been annotated will show a paper clip symbol: near the top.

Note that in the Toolbar, all the navigation buttons are on the left. The only exception is the [image] button on the right.


Copy and Copy Topic

Don't forget that you can copy complete topics (using Edit/Copy Topic in the menu bar) or portions of topics to the clipboard (using Edit/Copy in the menu bar), which is useful if you want to paste information into other applications.


Print

You can print topics using File/Print Topic and change your printer settings using File/Print Setup...


Review

This is the end of this little tutorial, but before you leave it, just spend a few moments making sure that you understand how to use the following features (which you can click on to refresh your memory). Notice how the cursor shape changes as you move it over each hotspot.


More information

At any time, you can revisit this file by choosing the Doctor Help option in the Help menu. You can also get the standard help with Help by choosing How to use Help from the Help menu. (You can do that now if you wish).

You can browse on through this file. The remaining topics describe the Doctor Help macro for Word for Windows which was used to make this file, and also how to get it.

You can click on the Contents button now to return to the top menu, or click on Menu or Up a few times to see how the hierarchical jumps work.


Doctor Help

You are using a Windows Help file generated automatically by a Word for Windows macro called Doctor Help written by Roger Hadgraft. If you would like information on this macro, contact him by e-mail as roger.hadgraft@eng.monash.edu.au or by fax in Australia on +61 3 565 4944. The macro allows any Word document to be translated into a Help file, as long as it has been constructed with the standard heading styles as used in Word.

Registration

Standard features

Extended features


Registration

Registration is US$30 and you can obtain an evaluation version DRHELPE5.ZIP from FTP.CICA.INDIANA.EDU in the WINWORD subdirectory. The evaluation version does everything the registered version does, except that it is limited to 30 topics. (The registered version allows 2,000 topics).


Standard features

Standard Windows Help provides the following features:

1.	Click on hotspots to go to other topics,

2.	Go back to the previous screen (the Back button)

3.	Review the last 50 screens and jump to anyone of them (the History button)

4.	Go to the top table of contents (the Contents button)

5.	Search for a particular word or phrase

6.	Browse through some related topics

7.	An Annotate feature for adding notes to Help files

8.	Ability to define Bookmarks

9.	Print and Copy features


Extended features

To the standard features of WinHelp, Doctor Help adds:

1.	automatic creation of intermediate tables of contents

2.	Go back to the last table of contents or menu that we read (the Up button)

2.	Go back to this topic's parent menu (the Menu button)

3.	Browse through the entire file in linear order (like a book) - the >> and << buttons.

4.	Easy jumps back from supporting help files (when Doctor Help is used for both files)

5.	An Annotate button to encourage users to write notes on their help files

6.	A new Help menu item that calls up this file (Doctor Help item)

7.	A new Copy menu item (Copy Topic)

8.	For the author, the ability to maintain a single source for both printed and on-line documents, and to automatically create an Index in the printed document to match the Search list of keywords in the on-line document.


Back

Basic Reading Methods / Cross References & Back

Basic Reading Methods / Backtracking - Back & History


Contents

Basic Reading Methods / Intermediate Tables of Contents & Up or Menu

Basic Reading Methods / Contents button