HtmlHelpA function (htmlhelp.h)

Article
02/22/2024

Displays a help window.

Using the API commands, you can specify which topic to display in the help window, whether the help window is a three-pane Help Viewer or a pop-up window, and whether the HTML topic file should be accessed via a context ID, an HTML Help URL, or a Keyword link (KLink) lookup.

Syntax

HWND HtmlHelpA(
  [in, optional] HWND      hwndCaller,
  [in]           LPCSTR    pszFile,
  [in]           UINT      uCommand,
  [in]           DWORD_PTR dwData
);

Parameters

[in, optional] hwndCaller

Specifies the handle (hwnd) of the window calling HtmlHelp. The help window is owned by this window.

When the help window is closed, HtmlHelp will return focus to the owner unless the owner is the desktop. If hwndCaller is the desktop, then the operating system determines where focus is returned.

In addition, if HtmlHelp sends any notification messages from the help window, they are sent to hwndCaller as long as you have enabled notification message tracking in the help window definition.

[in] pszFile

Depending on the uCommand value, specifies the file path to either a compiled help (.chm) file, or a topic file within a specified help file.

A window type name can also be specified, preceded with a greater-than (>) character.

If the specified command does not require a file, this value may be NULL.

[in] uCommand

Specifies the command to complete.

[in] dwData

Specifies any data that may be required, based on the value of the uCommand parameter.

Return value

Depending on the specified uCommand and the result, HtmlHelp returns one or both of the following:

The handle (hwnd) of the help window.
NULL. In some cases, NULL indicates failure; in other cases, NULL indicates that the help window has not yet been created.

Remarks

The syntax applies to ANSI character sets. When using a Unicode character set, the type of the pszFile parameter should be "LPCTSTR ".

When using the HTML Help API, set the stack size of the hosting executable to at least 100k. If the defined stack size is too small, then the thread created to run HTML Help will also be created with this stack size, and failure could result. Optionally, you can remove /STACK from the link command line, and remove any STACK setting in the executable's DEF file (default stack size is 1MB in this case). You can also you can set the stack size using the /Fnumber compiler command (the compiler will pass this to the linker as /STACK).

Examples

The following example calls the HH_DISPLAY_TOPIC command to open the help file named Help.chm and display its default topic in the help window named Mainwin. Generally, the help window specified in this command is a standard HTML Help Viewer.

HWND hwnd =
   HtmlHelp(
            GetDesktopWindow(),
            "c:\\Help.chm::/Intro.htm>Mainwin",
            HH_DISPLAY_TOPIC,
            NULL) ;

Note

The htmlhelp.h header defines HtmlHelp as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Target Platform	Windows
Header	htmlhelp.h
Library	Htmlhelp.lib
DLL	hhctrl.ocx

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