Re: HtmlHelp

Hi Nick,

On Oct 27, 2005, at 1:41 PM, Nick Levine wrote:

> Has anyone had any experience invoking HtmlHelp from Lispworks?

Some experience, not completely pleasant :).

Below are the remains of some code commented out in my current  
project. I think there were a few issues I did not solve and I  
decided to use plain html with a browser for help, similar to  
Lispworks. If I recall correctly, HTML help insists on being the  
topmost window which is very annoying if you want to use the help  
contents as reference when typing something.

If you find it useful, please post fixes and improvements back to the  
list.



John DeSoi, Ph.D.
http://pgedit.com/
Power Tools for PostgreSQL



(defvar *help-cookie* nil)


(defconstant +hh_display_topic+ 0)
(defconstant +hh_display_toc+ 1) ;apparently no different from 0
(defconstant +hh_sync+ 9) ;show the contents for the current topic
(defconstant +hh_initialize+ 28)
(defconstant +hh_uninitialize+ 29)



(fli:register-module :mshelp :real-name "hhctrl.ocx")




; this is right from the docs but does not seem to work - always   
returns 0
(fli:define-foreign-function (GetActiveWindow "GetActiveWindow")
     ()
   :result-type win32:hwnd
   :documentation "Returns the window handle of the active window
for the current thread. If no active window is associated with the
current thread then it returns 0.")

(fli:define-foreign-function (GetForegroundWindow "GetForegroundWindow")
     ()
   :result-type win32:hwnd)

(fli:define-foreign-function (GetDesktopWindow "GetDesktopWindow")
     ()
   :result-type win32:hwnd)




(fli:define-foreign-function (HtmlHelp "HtmlHelp" :dbcs)
     ((caller win32:hwnd)
      (file-lpstring :pointer)
      (command (:unsigned :int))
      (data :pointer))
   :result-type win32:hwnd
   :module :mshelp)


(defun %help-init ()
   (if *help-cookie*
     t
     (progn
       (setf *help-cookie* (fli:allocate-foreign-object :type :pointer))
       (HtmlHelp 0 nil +hh_initialize+ *help-cookie*)
       (lw:define-action "When quitting image" "Windows help cleanup"  
'%help-cleanup)
       *help-cookie*)))

;! add close all entry point
(defun %help-cleanup ()
   (when *help-cookie*
     (HtmlHelp 0 nil +hh_uninitialize+ *help-cookie*)
     (fli:free-foreign-object *help-cookie*)
     (setf *help-cookie* nil)))


(defun active-window ()
   (let ((win (GetActiveWindow)))
     (when (zerop win)
       (setf win (GetForegroundWindow)))
     win))


; can only be done from one thread and it must be an interface thread
(defun %help-display-topic (path &optional win)
   (if *application-interface*
     (let ((active-window (or win (active-window))))
       (apply-in-pane-process *application-interface* '%help-display- 
topic-internal path active-window))
     (alert (localize "Unable to load help topic. The main heap  
thread could not be located."))))




(defun %help-display-topic-internal (path &optional win)
   (%help-init)
   (let ((active-window (or win (active-window)))) ;! see about using  
window representation from interface
     (unless (zerop active-window)
       (fli:with-foreign-string (path-ptr element-count byte-count
                                         :external-format :unicode)
           path
         (declare (ignore element-count byte-count))
         (HtmlHelp active-window path-ptr +hh_display_topic+ nil)))))

Re: HtmlHelp

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