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Inside Macintosh: More Macintosh Toolbox /

Chapter 3 - Help Manager / Help Manager Reference

Help Manager Routines / Adding Items to the Help Menu

HMGetHelpMenuHandle

To append items to the Help menu, use the HMGetHelpMenuHandle function.

FUNCTION HMGetHelpMenuHandle (VAR mh: MenuHandle): OSErr;

mh

A copy of a handle to the Help menu.

DESCRIPTION

The HMGetHelpMenuHandle function returns in its mh parameter a handle to your application's help menu. With this handle, you can append items to the Help menu by using the AppendMenu procedure or other related Menu Manager routines. The Help Manager automatically adds the divider line that separates your items from the rest of the Help menu.

Be sure to define help balloons for your items in the Help menu by creating an 'hmnu' resource and specifying the kHMHelpMenuID constant as its resource ID.

The Menu Manager functions MenuSelect and MenuKey return a result with the menu ID in the high word and the menu item in the low word. Both functions return the HelpMgrID constant in the high word when the user chooses an appended item from the Help menu. The number of the appended menu item is returned in the low word
of the function result. In the future, Apple Computer, Inc., may choose to add other items to the Help menu. To determine the number of items in the Help menu, call the Menu Manager function CountMItems.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS

Do not use the Menu Manager function GetMenuHandle to get a handle to the Help menu, because GetMenuHandle returns a handle to the global Help menu, not the
Help menu that is specific to your application.

ASSEMBLY-LANGUAGE INFORMATION

The trap macro and routine selector for the HMGetHelpMenuHandle function are

Trap macro	Selector
_Pack14	$0200

RESULT CODES

noErr	0	No error
paramErr	-50	Error in parameter list
memFullErr	-108	Not enough room in heap zone
resNotFound	-192	Unable to read resource
hmHelpManagerNotInited	-855	Help menu not set up

SEE ALSO

"Adding Menu Items to the Help Menu" beginning on page 3-83 provides details and illustrative sample code for using HMGetHelpMenuHandle. The 'hmnu' resource is described in detail in "Providing Help Balloons for Menus" beginning on page 3-24. See the chapter "Menu Manager" in Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Toolbox Essentials for information about AppendMenu, MenuSelect, MenuKey, and other Menu Manager routines.