Implement Apple Help

General
1

Can anyone show me some sample code to implement and use Apple Help.
My existing apps use HelpLogic and UniHelp both of which now seem dead. All the DECLARES needed to implement Apple Help are Greek to me and in any case the only sample I can find applies to Carbon not Cocoa.
I don’t have Xcode installed … if you are not programming commercially and keeping it simple you don’t really need it. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a plug-in replacement for UniHelp.

Can anyone help please?
Jack

2

See http://nswrs.com/ from Tim Parnell

3

Michel beat me by 10 seconds :wink:

4

To hop in, until now I’ve used Freeway Pro to create Apple Help files to add them to the project with AppWrapper.

Now, ´cause Freeway´s gone, what application do you recommend to create the Help files in the future?

I think I’ll take a look either in Everweb seen in the Xojo Design Award,
or in Goldfish (both of them has been created with Xojo).

Also to be used to create a simple web page offering the compiled Xojo projects for download.

5

All three of those solutions are for creating full websites. Answers is more specifically targeted at creating help / FAQ style documents. Keep in mind that you will have to run the output of any of these four products through Apple Help Indexer or use AppWrapper’s tools to make the Apple Help Book.

6

My problem is not authoring the help, I can manage that ok. It’s the code I need in my Xojo program to trigger the display.
I don’t think I will too much of a problem installing it in the app bundle, it’s what code do I need when the user clicks Help.

Jack

7

Oh there’s code for it right inside the AppWrapper Help.

#if TargetCocoa then declare function NSClassFromString lib "Foundation" ( className as CFstringRef ) as Ptr declare function sharedApplication lib "AppKit" selector "sharedApplication" ( classRef as Ptr ) as Ptr declare sub showMyHelp lib "AppKit" selector "showHelp:" ( appRef as Ptr, sender as Ptr ) showMyHelp( sharedApplication( NSClassFromString( "NSApplication" ) ), nil ) #endif
This code comes from an external source, I copied and pasted it here for your convenience. I take no responsibility for this code, and you should probably double check it to make sure it doesn’t do anything like rm –rf /

You can thank @Sam Rowlands :slight_smile:
(you probably should too, AppWrapper is amazing)

8

Thanks for that, I’ll check it out.

9

App Wrapper will auto-run the indexer tool when your publish the Help Book in App Wrapper. We use App Wrapper to wrap App Wrapper, so the App Wrapper help is added with App Wrapper.

10

Wow, that’s a boot strap.

John, AppWrapper also helps me with Code signing.