The custom help file feature of WintextCom Personal Information Manager(tm) provides a means of writing notes for users that are accessible online instead of the standard online help. You enable this facility during the software installation, on the custom help file page.

When enabled, pressing F1 or selecting the user manual option on the help menu opens a simple text file in your Windows editor (Notepad or any other that you have installed as default for text files). This feature overrides both the F1 and Shift+F1 keys, even if you have changed the default format for the shipped files as described in the previous section. You can, however, use the Shift+F1 customisation feature explicitly to have this key do something different.

The custom help file feature is intended to facilitate the provision of individualised notes or instructions for users who prefer to read information very specific to their particular needs. A support person can use F1 to bring up the file for editing to produce the required information, then the user can easily access it in the same way for reading. Another use of this feature is to provide access to information on topics not covered in the WintextCom Personal Information Manager(tm) manual, such as the user's e-mail program or web browser. You can change the operation of the shift+F1 key to provide access to standard help in addition to the custom help file, or to something different again. Between them, the customisation capabilities of F1 and Shift+F1 provide very flexible options to meet the needs of both the user and the support person.

You can also produce and update the custom help file elsewhere and then install it to the WTC help folder, "help" in the installation folder. For the WintextCom version of the software (Windows Text Communications with Launchpad), the file is called "wintextcom help.txt". For the Launchpad-only version of the program (the Windows Launchpad), it is called "launchpad help.txt". The custom help file override is active if this file is present in the installation\help folder, so if you wish to use the standard help features at any time, just delete or rename the file.

Page url: http://wtcmanual.wintextware.com/index.html?m_custom_help_file.htm

The Custom Help File