potts@itl.itd.umich.edu (Paul Potts) (06/12/91)
The problem is, if you remove the help manager menu item, you will not just be interfering with the Finder. Apple has declared that that menu will be the standard place for applications to place their own special help functions, not just the place to turn balloon help on and off. This seems to be all for the best to me, since maybe now we won't have Microsoft putting a "Help" button in their about box, and other weirdness like that. As for some other scheme for showing balloons... for example, only when you have a particular key down... there is no reason that your application can't implement something like that. That is what I like about the new help manager: it just defines a basic set of help objects (the menu and the standard baloon definitions) and leaves it to you to add whatever you want to that list. If you really want to get rid of help, once and for all and for all your applications, you could try removing the "PACK 14" resource, and see what crashes and what doesn't. I am all in favor of standards for things like that. If you aren't, you could try Windows 3... Word for Windows puts a Help menu at the right of the menu bar. Windows Paintbrush puts it in the rightmost menu item. Arts and Letters Editor puts it at the far right, with an "about" as the last item, while Toolbook puts it at the far right with no "about" at all... HDC MicroApps use buttons to get to the Help, with no help menu item at all (and they are weird-looking buttons at that). Some of them don't have help at all. (To Microsoft's credit, most of the menus look fairly consistent, and F1 always gets you help. For other key equivalents, it isn't nearly this simple.) -paul r. potts- potts@itl.itd.umich.edu