CONTENTS


               Overview................................... 2

               Making Your Own Help File.................. 3

               Making Your Help File Memory Resident...... 4

               Trouble Shooting........................... 5

               Info....................................... 6



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OVERVIEW

Helping Hand is a very useful memory resident help system.  It can be used in
an office where many people are required to use the computer, people with
varying degrees of competency.  A help system can be set-up so that by
pressing two keys a user can receive help on any aspect of the computer's
operation.

Helping Hand really comes into its own when used in conjunction with bespoke
or custom software.  The author of a bespoke software package can now produce
a pop-up help system in minutes.  Helping Hand can also aid programming by
providing instant reference to the language's reserved words, syntax, etc.

Helping Hand uses 73K of memory.  A number of pop-up help files can be
installed by assigning a different function key to each one.



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MAKING YOUR OWN HELP FILE

A help file can be created by using any standard text editor (eg. SideKick)
that produces an ASCII text file.  Wordstar users should use non-document
mode. The help file can contain a maximum of 368 lines of text, and each
line can hold a maximum of 78 characters.  One page is the equivalent of 23
lines.

The help file can hold a maximum of 16 full pages of text (16x23=368 lines).
However, by using the New Page symbol '@' you can fit more than 16 pages of
text in a help file.  For instance, a help file of over 60 pages could be
created if each page contained only 5 lines of text. This can easily be done
by placing '@' (without the quotes) after every 5 lines.

The New Page symbol '@' must be placed on a line of its own and in the first
character position of that line.  The easiest way to learn how to create a
help file is to take a look at how this help file was written.  Use the
MS-DOS command 'TYPE' to display the HELPME.HLP file on the screen.
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MAKING YOUR HELP FILE MEMORY RESIDENT

Producing a pop-up version of your help file is easy.  At the MS-DOS prompt
type the following:

A>HELP filename.ext Fn        (eg. A>HELP HELPME.HLP F10)
                   
            │       │
            │       └─────── Enter the name of the function key
            │                that will be used in conjunction with
            │                ALT to call up your memory resident
            │                help file (eg. F10).
            │
            └── Enter the name of your help file
                here (eg. HELPME.HLP).

More than one pop-up help file can be installed at a time by assigning each
to a different function key.
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TROUBLE SHOOTING

(Q) The computer just beeps when I type ALT and the Function Key assigned to
    my help file.  What am I doing wrong?
(A) Helping Hand is beeping to tell you that it can't pop-up while the
    computer is displaying graphics.  Helping Hand can only pop-up in text
    modes.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
(Q) I have both SideKick (trademark of Borland International) and Helping
    Hand in memory.  I can call SideKick up from within Helping Hand but
    can't call Helping Hand up from within SideKick.  What is wrong?
(A) You loaded Helping Hand after SideKick.  SideKick must always be the last
    pop-up program to be loaded into memory.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
(Q) My Amstrad PC with monochrome monitor doesn't display colour text very
    well.  What can I do about this?
(A) Type ALT-X within Helping Hand to switch the screen colours to black and
    white.  Type ALT-X again to switch back to colour.
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         ║                     AWARE SOFTWARE                    ║
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