Legacy Document

Inside Macintosh: More Macintosh Toolbox /

Chapter 3 - Help Manager / Help Manager Reference

Application-Defined Routines

A balloon definition function is responsible for calculating the content region and structure region of the help balloon window and drawing the frame of the help balloon. The Help Manager takes care of positioning, sizing, and drawing your help balloons, and the standard balloon definition function provides a consistent and attractive shape to balloons across all applications. Though it takes extra work on your part, and your balloons will not share the consistent appearance of help balloons used by the Finder and by other applications, you can create your own balloon definition function, described in this section as MyBalloonDef.

When you use the HMShowBalloon and HMShowMenuBalloon functions to display help balloons, you pass a pointer to a tip function in the tipProc parameter. Normally, you supply NIL in this parameter to use the Help Manager's default tip function. However, you can also supply your own tip function, described in this section as MyTip. The Help Manager calls your tip function after calculating the size and the location of a help balloon and before displaying it. This allows you to examine and, if necessary, adjust the balloon before it is displayed. For example, if you determine that the help balloon would obscure an object that requires extensive redrawing, you might use a different variation code to move the balloon.

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Subtopics

MyBalloonDef

MyTip