Customized Director Help

With Director 8.5 a new help system was introduced (which got changed for the next release of director: Director MX. Please read the notes about Director MX below).
Since there were complaints about the overhead to launch the browser in order to view the html based help files, we were kindly provided with a "hook" to a customizable director movie, which will get launched as a MIAW,

The MIAW opens in a fraction of the time the browser would need to display the html files and is fully customizable.

To get this additional functionality just put a director movie named "help.dir" into the help folder, which is inside the folder where director is installed on your HD.

(You can find the original "help.dir" and documentation at macromedias website in the director downloads section. Lingo Dictionary Utility )

For my own purpose I changed the original "help.dir".
(actually it is a 'quick hack', which left the design of the original file mostly untouched. Certainly the movie could be improved a little further...)

The changes are:

- editable line at the top of the left keyword pane to quickly access keywords by typing the first letters and hitting RETURN

- a "save changes" button, which gives you the ability to add custom comments or correct errors in the help files.
A copy of the original html file is saved to a folder named "myHtml", leaving the original html help file untouched. (the files are the same that get used in the browser based help and since you can't display images in a director text member the original html files get stripped to be displayed in the help.dir. So I chosed not to modify the original files in order to leave the browser based help functional, but rather save a copy of them, which then are used by help.dir in the first place) So every file you'll find in "myHtml" is a copy of the original file, which is located in the folder "html", and has your custom modifications in it.
removing one of the modified files from the folder "myHtml" causes help.dir to use the original file again.

- I converted the havok lingo reference pdf to html files and placed them in the folder "myHtml".
Lazy me, didn't convert and split the pdf file by hand, but rather by some lingo scripts so there are *some* errors in the havok section (mostly after the word "example"...)
but since there is the save functionality you can simply correct these (mostly) formatting errors, as soon as you come across one, and afterwards save the file.

Director MX:

In Director MX the things changed again. The help system no longer is browser based. It got re-engeneered to use the help system of the OS it runs on. In case of OSX (Director MX no longer supports MacOS 9) this is Apples Help Viewer, which is rather akward to work with, because it is slow and buggy (at least for now = MacOS 10.2.6). Nevertheless the OSX help system is a html based system, so the director help files are still there, although they got renamed and are now stored in a different folder, than for Director 8.5.
So I had to rework the above described MIAW help viewer to work again in Director MX. And while I was doing it I got some additional ideas, which features to add to the original help MIAW. The new version now works for DiMX as well as for Director 8.5. However, if you are running DiMX/Windows the help files for lingo are missing. So you will have to supply the html help files. If you own DiMX/Mac, then you can simply copy the contents of the help folder from DiMX/Mac to your Windows Director Xtras folder. If you own Director 8.5 (either Win or Mac) you can use the D 8.5 helpfiles (however the few new features introduced with DiMX are missing). Either copy the files to the customhelpfiles folder or point this help movie to the location, where they are stored on your HD. (ALT-click on a lingo keyword entry)

The new, additional features of the reworked help MIAW are:

• Modules for other keywords
• History
• Search in the help files content
• Ability to add entries and indices
• Resizable window
• Preferences
• Modified design

The additional features are described further in the Read me file, which is in the download archive.

I designed the movie, that additional html based helpfiles can be incorporated easily. So it may become a help system which grows and is customizable by everyone to fit his own needs and maybe will become a sort of open source project. I encourage you to add other keyword dictionaries either for your own scripting xtras or script objects or for xtras from other authors (after asking them for permission). Feel free to ask me, if you need help to add other features, improve the code or fix existing bugs.

View the Readme file for the new DiMX dictionary online (this file is included in the download)

Installation (Director 8.5x):

- Download and unstuff the .zip or .sit file at the bottom of this page

- locate the folder where director is installed on your HD

- open the folder "Help", which should be in the before mentioned director folder

- copy the file named "help.dir" and the folder "customHelpFiles" into the "Help" folder within your director folder.

- copy additional modules into the folder "customHelpFiles". Each modul has one index file "LWH_" & <name of modul> and a folder with the help files <name of modul>

- invoke help.dir by the methods described at the top of this page

 

Installation (Director MX):

- Download and unstuff the .zip or .sit file at the bottom of this page

- locate the folder where director is installed on your HD

- open the folder "Xtras", which should be in the before mentioned director folder

- copy the file named "help.dir" and the folder "customHelpFiles" into the "Xtras" folder within your director folder

- copy additional modules into the folder "customHelpFiles". Each modul has one index file "LWH_" & <name of modul> and a folder with the help files <name of modul>

- invoke help.dir by choosing "help" from the menu "Xtras"

 

Requirements:

Director 8.5 or higher

Download:

LingoDictionaryDMX.zip (228 KB)

Additional modules (Copy the contents of the uncompressed archive into the folder "customhelFiles"):

MultiUser Xtra keywords (112 KB)
ActionScript keywords (German only 676 KB)
BuddyAPI keywords (Mac keywords 52 KB)
Havok keywords (60 KB)
FileXtra4 keywords (48 KB)
PRegEx keywords (64 KB)

or

All 6 xtra indices in one big file (1004 KB)