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From: ejb@think.com (Erik Bailey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Standards for Balloon Help?
Message-ID: <1991Jun13.203051.7210@Think.COM>
Date: 13 Jun 91 20:30:51 GMT
References: <1991Jun12.155432.13822@Think.COM> <14057@goofy.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 50

In article <14057@goofy.Apple.COM> carr@apple.com (Randy Carr) writes:
>In article <1991Jun12.155432.13822@Think.COM>, I wrote:
>> 
>> I have a question.  Short of turning balloon help on and whizzing the mouse
>> around the screen to look for balloons, is there any way to determine if
>> balloon help is supported by an application?  Every time I get a new CDEV
>> (I *refuse* to call them Extensions or Control Panels! :-)) that's designed
>> for System 7, I always check if it supports balloon help.  3/4 don't (how
>> un-System-7-like!).  There's gotta be an easier way to do this.
>
>You can't really tell if an application, cdev, or DA supports balloons as the
>Help Mgr can be called directly.  However, most 7.0 studly developers will 
>want to put a 'hfdr' resource in their app to get a custom balloon message
>in the Finder. So this can be a quick indicator.

Hmm - I hadn't though of that.  Yeah, I suppose I can be happy with turning
help on, and whizzing the mouse over a bunch of icons, and seeing which
ones pop up balloons.  Ok, cool.

>> I thought of possibly an init that would check to see if the front
>> application supports balloon help (can that be done?) and if it doesn't,
>> grays out the "Show Balloons" menu item.  This isn't a good solution,
>> though, because "Show Balloons" still needs to be selectable -- the user
>> may want help for an application on the screen, but in the background.
>
>You don't want to do this as an application is not the only one who takes
>advantage of Balloons.  The system itself provides help for things like the
>Apple menu, window parts, the process menu, other application windows, etc.
>Graying out the Show Balloons menu item just isn't appropriate.

True enough.  Someone last week asked a question of whether the "hot spots"
can be determined (ie highlighted); I'm not sure if it was answered.  Is
this kind of information buried in the code of the application, or is it
available so an init (perhaps an FKey) could show you where help is
available?

>Randy Carr
>System Software (I wrote the Help Mgr)
>Apple Computer, Inc.
>Internet: carr@apple.com

Now THAT'S help straight from the source... :-) Thanks for responding, Randy!

--Erik

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