SAS/AF software provides several commands that you can use to display help for your application.
You can add these help commands to a menu item, or you can assign one of them as the
command that is executed by a control such as a push button. You can also attach the
commands to icon buttons on a toolbar.
The commands include
HELP
The HELP command displays
help for the active frame or window based on the values of the frame's
Help attributes. The Help topic or topics are displayed in the designated
help browser.
The WINDOWHELP command
performs the same function as HELP.
HELPMODE
When the HELPMODE command is issued, SAS enters
object help detection mode (helpmode). In helpmode, the cursor changes to a question mark
(?) and SAS waits for the user to select an object on the active frame. When a user
selects an object while in helpmode, SAS displays the help that is defined in that
object's
help attribute.
WBROWSE valid-URL
The WBROWSE command
simply displays a valid URL, which can be any page that can be displayed
by the associated Web browser.
The HELP command can be used in
conjunction with the HELPLOC:// protocol to display a specific Help
topic. The HELPLOC:// protocol is a mechanism defined by SAS for displaying
help files from within your application. For example, help
helploc://myapp/intro.htm opens the Help topic that
is stored in the HTML file named intro.htm.
To specify the location
of the help files for your application, you must add the appropriate
path in the HELPLOC system option in the configuration file that is
used to start your application.
Note: SAS/AF software uses the
HELPLOC option to identify the path it searches to locate online Help
files. The default path for SAS online Help is a format such as
!SASROOT/X11/native_help
or
!sasroot\core\help
If
you modify or remove this path from the HELPLOC option in your software
configuration file (instead of in your application's configuration
file), SAS software cannot locate its associated online Help.
You can add multiple
search paths to HELPLOC. The SAS Help facility replaces the HELPLOC://
protocol with a path listed in the HELPLOC option. The paths are searched
in the order in which they are listed until the valid Help topic is
found or until there are no further paths to search. For example,
if your HELPLOC option contains
('!sasroot\core\help' '!sasuser\classdoc')you
could add a path to the directory in which you stored the help for
your application:
('f:\apps\myapp\help' '!sasroot\core\help' '!sasuser\classdoc')The
SAS Help facility will then search through
f:\apps\myapp\help to
locate a Help topic before it searches the SAS online Help path (
!sasroot\core\help).
A path specified in
the HELPLOC option does not have to be a local directory. It can also
be a path on a valid Web server or a path to a network directory.
For example, consider a HELPLOC option that is defined as
('!sasroot\core\help' 'http://mycompany.com/intranet/apphelp')and
a help call from a
SAS/AF frame that uses the form
help helploc://myapp/intro.htm
In
this example, the SAS Help facility will first search for the requested
Help topic in the SAS online Help path. Then it will send a fully
qualified URL to the browser to locate the Help topic at
http://mycompany.com/intranet/apphelp/myapp/intro.htm