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11. The Help Menu

The Help menu provides access to the on-line help system via the following entries:

Contents

This entry will launch an HTML browser, set via the helpBrowser resource (see Application Resources), with the contents page.

On Context (F1)

This entry will change the mouse cursor to a question mark; if you click on a widget, an HTML browser will be launched with the help entry for that widget. If the widget doesn't have any help text, the bell will be rung and no browser will get launched.

On Application Resources

This entry will launch an HTML browser, set via the helpBrowser resource, with the Application Resources section.

On Command Line

This entry will launch an HTML browser, set via the helpBrowser resource (see Application Resources), with the Command Line Switches section.

About

This will pop-up a dialog box with the MGv version, operating system, etc... If you encounter a bug, the information in this dialog may be useful to the author.

If you are using Netscape/remote, Mosaic/CCI, or libhelp for on-line help, then MGv will attempt to maintain a connection with the browser so that only one instance of the browser will be required. If you are using plain HTML, then MGv will launch a separate browser for each help request. Note that when MGv exits, it will attempt to kill (via SIGTERM) any browsers that it has launched (this can be changed by setting the killChildrenAtExit resource to False).

11.1 About Dialog

The About dialog contains the program name, a copyright statement, author contact information, a Build Options button, and a Dismiss button. The Dismiss button will remove the about box from the screen; if the Build Options dialog is also visible, it will be removed as well. Activating the Build Options button will pop up the Build Options dialog (see Build Options Dialog).

11.2 Build Options Dialog

The Build Options dialog contains various flags and program names used to compile the program;. The entries are as follows:
version

The program version.

OS

The operating system name and version number.

make

The make command used.

cc

The C compiler used.

defs

Macros defined by the build system.

warn

Warning and other miscellaneous compiler flags.

opt

Optimization/debugging compiler flags.

incl

Include paths for the C compiler.

ldflags

Flags passed to the linker.

libs

Libraries used to link the program.

uname

This line will contain the operating system name, release number, version, and machine type. The OS line should contain similar information but the values in uname come straight from the operating system rather than the person that compiled the program.

bindir

The binary installation directory.

libdir

The library installation directory. Help files should be in the help subdirectory of libdir.

build date

The data and time (in the form yyyy/mm/dd HH:MM UTC) when the program was linked.

If you find a bug, the information in this dialog may be useful to the maintainer.

Dismissing the About dialog will also dismiss the Build Options dialog.


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