HMGetHelpMenuHandle

Return a copy of a handle to the Help menu

#include <Balloons.h> Help Manager

MenuHandle *mh; a handle to the Help menu

The Help Manager automatically appends the Help menu when your

application calls InsertMenu and then DrawMenuBar. The Help

menu is automatically appended to the right of all your menus and to

the left of the Application menu (and to the left of the Keyboard menu

if a non-Roman script system is installed).

mh is a copy of a handle to the Help menu. Once you have a handle to the

Help menu that is specific to your application, you can append

items to it using the AppendMenu routine or related

Menu Manager routines. The Help Manager automatically adds

the dashed line that separates your items from the rest of the menu.

Returns: an Error Code.

noErr (0) No error

paramErr (-50) Error in parameter list

memFullErr (-108) Not enough room in heap zone

resNotFound (-192) Unable to read resource

hmHelpManagerNotInited (-855) Help menu not set up

Notes: The Help menu is specific to each application. The Help menu items

defined by the Help Manager should be common to all applications, but

you can append your own menu items for help-related information.

You can append items to the Help menu using the

HMGetHelpMenuHandle function. Do not use the GetMHandle function

to get a handle to the Help menu, because GetMHandle returns a handle to

the global Help menu, not the Help menu that is specific to your

application. Once you have a handle to the Help menu that is specific to your

application, you can add items to it using the AppendMenu procedure or

other Menu Manager routines.

Be sure to define help balloons for your items in the Help menu by

creating an 'hmnu' resource and specifying the kHMHelpMenuID constant as

its resource ID.

The MenuSelect and MenuKey functions return a result with the menu

ID in the high word and the menu item in the low word of the function

result. Both functions return the HelpMgrID constant in the high word when

the user chooses an appended item from the Help menu.

The menu item number of the appended menu item is returned in the low

word of the function result. In the future, Apple may choose to add other

items to the Help menu. To determine the number of items in the Help

menu, call the CountMItems function.

Referenced by (5):