Charles Dye
Super Moderator
- May
- 5,098
- 133
Staff member
It would be nice if the online help features could be made plugin-aware. I propose something along these lines:
When help is requested via the HELP command or the F1 or Ctrl-F1 keys, TCC checks whether the specified word is a command, variable, or function provided by a plugin; and if so, whether that plugin exports a function named F1_help(). If the word is not provided by a plugin, or if that plugin does not offer an F1_help() function, then the help system is launched as usual. But if the plugin does provide F1_help(), TCC calls that instead and passes it a string containing the command/variable/function name, lowercased and with @ or _ prefixed as appropriate. The plugin is responsible for deciphering the name and launching a .CHM / .PDF / .TXT / .HTML, popping up a message box, or whatever else the author chooses.
It might also be useful to pass a second parameter to differentiate the HELP command from the F1 and Ctrl-F1 keystrokes. In the case of HELP, it might be appropriate to just dump text to stdout; for F1 and Ctrl-F1 probably not.
When help is requested via the HELP command or the F1 or Ctrl-F1 keys, TCC checks whether the specified word is a command, variable, or function provided by a plugin; and if so, whether that plugin exports a function named F1_help(). If the word is not provided by a plugin, or if that plugin does not offer an F1_help() function, then the help system is launched as usual. But if the plugin does provide F1_help(), TCC calls that instead and passes it a string containing the command/variable/function name, lowercased and with @ or _ prefixed as appropriate. The plugin is responsible for deciphering the name and launching a .CHM / .PDF / .TXT / .HTML, popping up a message box, or whatever else the author chooses.
It might also be useful to pass a second parameter to differentiate the HELP command from the F1 and Ctrl-F1 keystrokes. In the case of HELP, it might be appropriate to just dump text to stdout; for F1 and Ctrl-F1 probably not.