Help Menu Extensions Proposal

Overview

Inside the help directory will be a small text file which configures the help menu. The content of this file will entirely replace all items below the help menu ... i.e what you put here is all you get.

File looked for is "help.ext"

File Format

File format is a regular text file, where each line is either

• a comment (first char is #)
• a menu item
  • regular item
    • document to start
    • program to run
    • help about special
    • help topics special
  • separator
  • submenu header

Formats are:

• regular item:
  level  menu_text  cmd_type  command_or_doc
• separator:
  level  "-"
• submenu header:
  level  sub_hdr_text

The Synopsys default help.ext

#
# The standard Synopsys help.ext menu configuration
#
0 "&Help Topics" t
0 "-"
0 "Quick Tour" c "quicktour.exe"
0 "Synopsys &Web Site" d.htm "http://www.synopsys.com"
0 "-"
0 "&About FPGA Express" a

Description of fields

"Level"

defines menu level

• 0 is main Help menu level
• 1 is first popup level
• a lower number pops back up to the previous menu

"menu_text"

a string which will appear in the menu at the appropriate level Prefixing a character with & will underline it as the keyboard shortcut (normal resource syntax) See also "strings" below

"sub_hdr_text"

basically interpreted the same way as menu_text above. An item is treated as a subheader if it has no cmd_type or cmd

"cmd_type"

Indicates what kind of command follows. Single character:

c regular command - executed with CreateProcess. Once started, we do not wait for the command to finish
d a document. Normally, we just get the extension (last .ext in the docname string), but this can be overridden with the .ext suffix (e.g  d.htm) to the cmd type. This forces the app associated with .ext to run the docname. Example where this would be useful is with a web URL which is nominally a ".htm" doc, but may not have the ".htm" extension
a special: displays the built in "Help About" dialog
t special: displays the built in "Help Topics" item - i.e. opens the regular fpgaexp.hlp file

"command_or_doc"

Interpreted as indicated by the cmd_type field above. See also "strings" below

"-"

this is a special menu text which causes the item to be interpreted as a menu separator. The cmd_type and cmd should not be provided

Strings

• To get get a special character into a string, (text or cmd) escape with \ ... e.g. "ah\"cd"
  Only characters escapable at the moment are   "   \    &

Limitations

• Status bar prompts are not feasible