CompuServe Messages

Don, Well, I have to disagree with your assesment of what I'm saying, as well as your assesment of what has to happen when the HELP key is depressed. First of all, why do you have to save system sate, stop current task, locate mouse, etc.? The system does the processing for all input events now. When a key is depressed, it does what is necessary to analyze what it needs to do with the event, whether it be a mouse click or a keypress. The logic is built-in for that, and all that need be done is to decide if it should send the resultant message to the help-handler directly or to an application, or perhaps to completely ignore it, if the user has turned off that particular feature (reverting to making the HELP key a normal keypress, as it is now). Yes, the program must be activated, but only if it is in a Wait(). There is no need to activate any windows the application has up. After all, the program is not inactive just because its window is inactive. The application, if it is Wait()ing, and has that mask set up, certainly would not mind receiving the event, or it wouldn't have flagged it as a condition of awakening. If it is not waiting, but is processing, the event is no different than any other event that the user might send, and I'm sure you can visualize ways for a program to check for events during processing. Basically, it's up to the programmer to decide whether he wants to implement help. It would certainly be a lot cheaper in terms of programmer effort to implement it if the facility were provided by the system. Continued…