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Providing Context-Sensitive Help

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Feature Only in Professional and Enterprise Editions   Creating a Custom AppWizard is supported only in Visual C++ Professional and Enterprise Editions. For more information, see .

The Custom AppWizard project type provides you with the tools you need to create a help file that describes your custom steps:

  • A starter rich-text (.RTF) file, HLP\project.RTF, containing a topic for each custom step that the Custom AppWizard project type generated for you. You can use any rich-text format word processor, such as Microsoft Word, to add information to each custom-step topic in your project.RTF file.

  • A help project (.HPJ) file to control compiling your project.RTF file into a WinHelp help file.

  • Custom build rules on the .hpj, .cnt and resource.h file control the creation of the .HLP file from within the development environment.

Note   You cannot integrate your custom AppWizard’s help with the help system in your integrated development environment. But if you build a custom AppWizard that uses an existing sequence of AppWizard steps, your custom AppWizard will automatically use the help file that was created for the standard AppWizard steps. Your custom AppWizard will use your own WinHelp help file for the custom steps. The effect is not seen by the end user.

Your custom AppWizard, which has the extension: .AWX, and its help file must use the same base filename, and both must reside in Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\msdev98\Template directory.  When the end user clicks a custom step’s Help button, MFCAPWZ.DLL invokes WinHelp and passes it the current step’s help ID and the name of your custom AppWizard’s help file.

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