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The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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                           QuickHelp as a Monitor
 
When used with MS OS/2, QuickHelp may be run as a keyboard monitor and
activated in any full-screen session by pressing ALT+Q. This is the
recommended method for running QuickHelp under MS OS/2 as it is the fastest
(there is no startup time) and it is context sensitive.
 
To run QuickHelp as a keyboard monitor, you must detach it by typing the
following:
 
    detach qh [options]
 
Once QuickHelp has installed itself, it displays a version message box. This
box goes away after five seconds, or you can press any key to get rid of it.
You can prevent it from appearing at all by using -q option on the command
line or in the QH environment variable.
 
When installing QuickHelp as a keyboard monitor, you may use any of the
options that you would normally use when running QuickHelp from the command
line. Additionally, you may specify an -sg option on the command line (or in
the QH environment variable) in order to control the number of screen groups
(full-screen sessions) QuickHelp will monitor. The default is to monitor the
first six sessions. If you are not likely to use this many sessions, use
this option to reduce the number, thereby reducing the number of threads in
use by MS OS/2.
 
When QuickHelp is installed as a keyboard monitor, you activate it by
pressing ALT+Q. If you are running a non-graphics program at the time,
QuickHelp searches for the topic under the cursor (or immediately to the
left of the cursor) at the time you press ALT+Q. If the cursor is not over a
word, QuickHelp looks at the preceding 10 lines of the screen to see whether
a system or utility error has been displayed and, if so, searches for that
topic. Otherwise, it displays the last topic viewed.
 
There are a few differences in the way QuickHelp works when it is installed
as a keyboard monitor versus when it is run from a command line. The
following list outlines the major differences:
 
♦  Pressing the ESC key deactivates QuickHelp.
 
♦  You cannot switch sessions while the QuickHelp window is displayed.
 
♦  QuickHelp "remembers" the last topic displayed. If the cursor is on a
   blank line or surrounded by spaces when you press ALT+Q, QuickHelp
   displays the last topic viewed.
 
♦  QuickHelp is deactivated whenever you paste a topic, even if you have set
   Append mode.
 
See Also
 
◄Building a database►, ◄QuickHelp options►, ◄Navigating in QuickHelp►
 
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