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Custom AppWizard Help File Support

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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 MFC AppWizard gives you the tools you need to create context-sensitive help for the custom steps in your custom AppWizard:

  • A starter file in rich-text format (.RTF) that contains a topic for each custom step AppWizard generates. You need only use an .RTF editor (such as Microsoft Word) to supply the text for the ready-made topics.

  • Custom build rules on the .hpj, .cnt and resource.hlp file that generate a header map (.HM) file and compiles the custom AppWizard’s help (.HLP) file. The .HM file defines (#define) the help IDs of your custom custom AppWizard steps to numeric values that are readable by the help compiler (HCRTF.EXE). It also invokes the help compiler to generate the help file.

    A MakeHelp.bat is also supplied for projects in Visual C++ 6.0 for compatibility with previous releases.

  • A help project (.HPJ) file that controls compiling the .RTF file into an .HLP file.

Your custom AppWizard file, which has an extension of .AWX, and its help file must use the same base filename, and both must reside in Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\msdev98\Template. When the custom AppWizard 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.

Note   You cannot integrate your custom AppWizard’s help with the Visual C++ help system. However, if you build a custom AppWizard that uses an existing sequence of AppWizard steps, your custom AppWizard will automatically use the Visual C++ help file that was created for the standard MFC AppWizard steps. Your custom AppWizard will use your own WinHelp help file for the custom steps. The effect is seamless to the user.

See Also   Standard Custom Resource Templates, All AppWizard Projects, Dialog-Based Applications, Dynamic-Link Libraries, MDI and SDI Applications, ActiveX Applications, Help File Support, Database Applications.