Topic: Calling help functions from lisp

[tbrock]

Bear with me, guys. First post here.
Anyone out there have any experience calling help files from within a lisp routine?
There seems to be a function "help" and another "setfunhelp", however
both seem to give only the help file without calling the specific topic i need.
I have tried with acad *.chm files and my own compiled help files with the same results.

Need to know the correct syntax and what form of the topic I should be using for that argument.

Thanks

[Kerry]

try something like this perhaps

Code: [Select]


(defun c:foodle ()
    
  (getstring "Press F1 for help on the foodle command:")
    
)
(setfunhelp "c:foodle" "acad_acr.chm" "ARC")



[CAB]

Welcome to the Swamp tbrock.

[tbrock]

Thanks for the welcome CAB.
After poking around a little, I wish I had found this place some time ago.
Appreciate the effort, Kerry, but still in the same situation.
Best I can get is a help window open but not to any particular topic.
In fact it opens to "cannot display the webpage" until you choose a topic.
Any other suggestions out there?
Has anybody actually used compiled help files within an AutoCAD add-on?

Getting a little frustrated... seems like this should be simpler.

[tbrock]

Sorry I should have been a little more specific.. the end result is for a help file to be called from within dialog boxes during complex functions  where currently simple text files are used.

[Mark]

Sorry I should have been a little more specific.. the end result is for a help file to be called from within dialog boxes during complex functions  where currently simple text files are used.

I'm curious, why isn't a text file good enough?

[Mark]

take a look at this thread.
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=20409.msg248166#msg248166

[CAB]

Here is some more info:
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=20409.0


Shoot, you're too fast Mark.

[Lee Mac]

I use a PDF help file in this:

http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=31317.0

Not sure if that helps 

[T.Willey]

Maybe that will help you.  Here is how I call it to show the ActiveX property of ' startpoint '.

Code: [Select]

(help (findfile "acadauto.chm") "idh_startpoint")

[tbrock]

I'm curious, why isn't a text file good enough?

They have been doing their jobs for a long time, just trying to bring a more polished look.
Need to incorporate some graphics at some point so I don't have to ramble forever to paint a picture of what the user should see.
Guess over all it's all in the "slick" factor.

Thanks for the link to that other thread, I think I may be moving in the right direction now.
Still having difficulty with the "topic" argument. I think I may have left out the html file that defines topic ID's in my .chm files

[VovKa]

tbrock, you can also open topics this way

Code: [Select]

(startapp "hh.exe" (strcat "ms-its:" (findfile "acadauto.chm") "::" "idh_startpoint.htm"))if you've forgot html file names you can always decompile you chm file

Code: [Select]

(startapp "hh.exe" (strcat "-decompile C:/Tmp " (findfile "acadauto.chm")))