CompuServe Messages

Art, I think it is entirely up to the user as to what he wants help with, whether in or out of the particular application he is interacting with. The 'mouse pointer' context solution is a far more general solution, and allows for many special cases. As an example, you might have a program that monitors its active/inactive window state, and changes behaviour in the two states. Clicking to activate another application may or may not be appropriate at the time. It really is a matter of allowing for the most flexibility, and for future flexibility. I would like to see, as part of this HELP thing, the ability to place the mouse pointer over an icon for an application and to get a description of the purpose and use of the program or data file, to whatever degree the author saw fit to document it via this facility. As for HELP for scroll bars, sizing gadgets, and so on, I vehemently disagree with the thought that they are too trivial to warrant storage space. Consider the novice as well as the pro. How much easier it is for the novice to remember one simple rule: Place the mouse pointer over anything, hit the HELP key, and get more information. Granted, the novice would not get help for the system gadgets for long, but the mindset created by the facility, and the degree of comfort provided by it, would go far in alleviating the sense of being lost, especially if most application programmers took advantage of an easy to implement HELP feature. Don seems to want a single generic help file, with perhaps menus to select the appropriate topic. Note that this _can_ be done under either scheme, but that under his scheme, there is no provision for getting help more directly, more visually, and more quickly. -larry