WPHELP.COM by John Burns 12/10/87

The document which follows came with QHELP135 by Bob Montgomery.
I changed the help screen to one for Word Perfect 4.2 (since I
think Word Perfect's help function is abysmal in ease of use) and
included common, though less obvious, capabilities of Word Perfect.
The source, WPHELP.8, includes some extra comments over and above
those in the original QHELP.8 but the basic code is the same. I
changed the Hotkey to Alt-Left Shift so one can have separate
menus for Qedit and Word Perfect. This is not a necessity, however,
as you can use the same Hotkey for both with the disadvantage of
needing to access them in the sequence loaded by repeatedly pressing
the Hotkey and leaving them in reverse sequence by repeatedly pressing
the ESC key. If anyone can make this compatible with Ten Key by
Photon Software, please call my BBS (703-560-5616) and let me in on
the secret.


QHELP135.COM by Bob Montgomery 3/26/87

This program is an example of HELP.ASM by Bob Montgomery, which was a
rewrite of QHELP.ASM by Kurt Schelin, and is a template for creating
your own popup help screens. It contains all of the assembly code
required to make your message pop up using your choice of a shift key
combination for the hot keys; the shift keys are Cntrl, Alt, Left
Shift, Right Shift, Caps Lock, Number Lock, and Scroll Lock. The code
is written in A86 assembler formats; I prefer A86 because it doesn't
need the org, segment, assume, ends, etc assembler directives and is
a little smarter. Border characters can be used to partition the help
display, and to make it look more professional. The program
automatically centers the help screen on the display, in the colors
you selected with the Colattr equate.

The help message can be any message you desire with the following
restrictions:
1. The message must not exceed 80 characters/line-dictated by
screen width.
2. The message cannot exceed 25 lines-dictated by the screen
length.
3. Each line must be the same length-blank filled to make so.

To make your own help screen, pick a combination of shift keys to be
your hot keys and change the equate called Hotkey to the sum of these
keys. In the template, the hot keys are Cntrl-Left Shift. Then,
change the Colattr equate for the colors you want the help window to
be; the first nibble is the background color (0-7), and the second
nibble is the foreground color (0-15). If you want the help window to
blink, add 8 to the background color. Then change the db statements
at Hlpst and the following lines to your message; remember that each
line must have the same number of characters. In the template, each
line is a different upper case alphabetic letter. You may have from 1
to 80 characters/line, and you may have from 1 to 25 lines for your
help screen. The program will automatically center the help screen on
the display; that's what the equates following the help message do.











Then, assemble the source to the filename of your choice, and you
have a help screen COM program. The help screen for QEdit135 is used
in this example.

The program works with all displays (Monochrome, CGA, and EGA) in all
80 column text modes (will not work in graphics mode). It is a
'terminate and stay resident' program, and can be used with MARK &
RELEASE to free up memory when it is no longer required. For
instance, with QEdit, I do MARK, QHELP, QEDIT (filename), RELEASE in
a batch file or as CED synonyms.

The source is liberally commented so you can understand how it works.
The first thing that happens when you call it is a jump to the
initialize routine, which gets and saves the old keyboard interrupt
(Int 9) and the vectors the keyboard interrupt to this program. Then,
it terminates but stays resident, and the Start portion of the
program handles all keyboard interrupts from this point on.

A keyboard interrupt is generated each time a key is pressed or
released, and the neccessary steps required to get the key are known
only to the BIOS Int 9 routine. Therefore, we must call the BIOS Int
9 routine from this program to handle the key action. The only
problem with this is that the BIOS Int 9 program is an interrupt
handler and not a subroutine, which means it pops the return address
(like a subroutine) and the flag register at completion. To fake it
out and keep the stack pointer where it should be, we push the flags
before calling the BIOS Int 9 routine (as a subroutine), and it pops
the flags when it is done. The only thing the program looks for is
the hot key combination on each keyboard interrupt, and it uses a
BIOS service (Int 16-get shift status) to do this. Any other keys are
ignored, but the action required to record the key press or release
has been done by the call to the BIOS Int 9 routine in the new Int 9
program. If the hot keys have been pressed, the program checks a
flag to see if the help screen is already up; if so, the hot keys are
ignored. This is done in the Start portion of the program.

If the hot keys are pressed and the help screen is not up, the
program then determines the current video mode and page, and saves
it. From this, the current video display area of memory is
determined. Then, the cursor is disabled and the help window area of
the display is copied to a buffer in the program, so it can be
restored when the help window is removed. The help window data is
then copied to display memory with whatever attribute (color) you
selected, and the display is then unblanked. A flag is set to
indicate that the help window is up. Your help data is now visible on
the display, and is centered horizontally and vertically, and in the
color you selected with the Colattr equate (if you have a color
display). To avoid 'snow' on CGA monitors while video memory is being
accessed, the display is blanked during video read/write times, and
blanking and unblanking occur at vertical retrace time; this is not
done for the monochrome monitor, since it doesn't have the 'snow'
problem.

Now the program waits for the Escape key, and ignores all others.
When the Escape key is finally pressed, video is disabled and the old
screen data is put back on the display. Then the cursor is enabled










and the display is unblanked, and you have your original screen back.
The flag which indicates the help screen is up is cleared, and the
program resumes looking for the hot keys.

I hope this program is of some use to you, and you are free to copy
and distribute it, but please distribute it in its original form so
it can be used by others. I also hope you follow the source listing,
and maybe learn something in the process. This is my contribution to
the shareware community. Enjoy the program.

If you have any comments or suggestions, I can be contacted at the
Black Hole BBS in Orlando, Fl., 1200/2400 Baud (305) 260-6397.

Bob Montgomey





John Burns may be contacted at the "Life's Like That" BBS in Dunn
Loring, VA (near DC) 1200/2400 Baud (703) 560-5616