More Advanced Procedures > Using Context-Sensitive Help > Application calls to context-sensitive topics

Making the calls to your context-sensitive topics is basically a job for the programmer, not the help author (you may be both, of course). In the help itself there is no difference between context-sensitive topics and popups and normal topics and popups – the difference is how they are called from the application.

The HTML Help CHM files, Winhelp HLP files and Visual Studio Help/Help 2.0 HSX files generated by Help & Manual are fully standard-compliant so you can use all the standard procedures for linking to and calling context-sensitive topics.

Context calls to Webhelp are made with regular URLs. For details see Application calls to Webhelp.

These are normal topic calls that open the main help viewer at the topic you are making the call to. See your programming language's documentation for making calls to the help format you are using.

See Application calls to Webhelp for details of the URL syntax for making calls to Webhelp topics.

Application calls to field-level popups are made using the popup interfaces of the Microsoft HTML Help and Winhelp APIs. The syntax for these calls depends on the programming language you are using. See the section on tutorials and resources for programmers below.

Application calls to HTML Help popups can only be made if you use HTML Help's own plain-text popup format, in which the popup texts are stored in a special plain-text file inside the CHM file..This option is activated in Configuration > Publishing Options > HTML Help > Popup Topics in the Project Explorer, where you can also specify the name of the text file to be generated.

Plain text popup topics used in HTML Help must have context numbers! This is required by the Microsoft HTML Help API for popups and if your popup topics do not have help context numbers they will not be exported to the internal popup text file in the CHM.

•	The APIs of HTML Help and the obsolete Winhelp format are fully documented in the help files delivered with the free Microsoft help compilers for these formats. You can find them in the program directories of the HTML Help Workshop and Microsoft Help Workshop compiler packages.

•	Tutorials for interfacing between your help and your application in the most major programming languages are available on the tutorials page at the EC Software website.

•	A free set of tools for interfacing to help and context-sensitive help Borland Delphi and Borland C++ is also available at the website, on the Delphi resources page.

•	The following websites are also highly recommended as good sources of up-to-date information on interfacing with help files from your application:

The MS Help Wiki

Helpware.net

MSDN HTML Help Reference

The HTML Help Center