SCO OpenServer Release 5 Help API

The SCO Skunkware 5.0 team is very proud to be able to bring to you the very first public release of the SCO OpenServer Release 5 Help API.

The SCO Help API provides a low-level context-sensitive help api for use with the ScoHelp system. X11 graphical clients wishing to provide context-sensitive help via the ScoHelp facility can utilize the SCO Help API contained herein.

The new callable low-level scohelp api enables other Motif applications to act as scohelp "clients", thus allowing requests to be made of scohelp to display specific topics. Topics can be either "hard coded" using the actual topic name, or can be a "widget tree" name. "Widget tree" names are intended to be used by a higher level api; the direct user of the low-level api will use only "hard coded" topic names.

SCO Skunkware 5.0 contains a help header file (/usr/skunk/include/api.h) and help library (/usr/skunk/lib/libhelp.a). A sample application is included (/skunkware/95/src/X11/help/*) with sample documentation. To install the sample documentation into /usr/lib/scohelp on your local machine, login as root and issue the command :

        # cd /skunkware/95/src/X11/help; make install
You can then run the sample program api_test and press F1 or use the Help options on the menu to see scohelp work. Note that if your system is using a Documentation Server other than localhost, you will need to install the sample documentation on the Documentation Server.

See the SCO OpenServer Release 5 Help API technical specification for additional details.

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