Help ToolKit for OSF/Motif and the X-Window System

The Help ToolKit for Motif allows developers to easily add and modify various types of on-line context-sensitive help to Motif applications. Using a small set of functions to install the library, every widget and gadget in a Motif application seemingly inherits new resources allowing help to be configured and changed via X resource files.

The ToolKit supports three core help types: Tips, Cues, and Hints. All of these help types can be assigned to any widget and any Motif-based gadget.

Tips are brief notes that appear in small pop-up windows over or near a screen object when the mouse cursor briefly rests over the object. Tips are commonly seen with icon buttons and where originally popularized in Windows 95 applications.

Cues are displayed in small pop-up windows that normally float above the shell widget that contains the keyboard focus. The content of the Cue is based on the widget or gadget that currently has the keyboard focus.

Hints are textual messages that appear in a fixed location on a window when the mouse cursor moves over a given widget or gadget contained in that window.

In addition, the ToolKit provides an API that allows a developer to plug-in virtually any on-line help system, such as the Help system provided through CDE. In fact, a sample CDE Help system plug-in is provided with the registered version of the ToolKit. The Help ToolKit also provides a rich API allowing help to be controlled and manipulated programmatically.

The Help Toolkit was written in the late 1990s. It was originally licensed as shareware controlled by my company Software Components, Inc. -- that's why it is called XscHelp. The company is now defunct and the software has been dormant for well over a decade. I recently noticed it on an old backup, so I am now making it available to the general community for whatever purpose under the MIT license.

There were a couple of articles published about XscHelp in The X Advisor which was an early webzine for X Window System development. I do not have copies and, amazingly, all the links are dead. I would be happy if they were rediscovered somewhere.

• "Providing User Feedback with Quick Help -- Part 1: Quick Help Described," The X Advisor, Feburary 1996
• "Providing User Feedback with Quick Help -- Part 2: Quick Help Implementation Details," The X Advisor, March 1996

I have not built this software in over a decade and I do not currently have an environment to do so.

I have a User's Guide in postscript and PDF which are now also licensed under the MIT License regardless of what the printed document states.

Copywrite (c) Robert S. Werner (a.k.a Akiva Werner). All rights reserved.

Licensed under the MIT license.