is it possible for these two to work together? I've tried using the paradox 7 routine, helpShowTopic but that appears to only be able to deal with .hlp files which is the old help format. If it doesn't, does anyone have a clue on how to rewrite it to deal with a chm file? muchas gracias!

Just use the execute() command and call Windows help directly, with the chm file as a command line argument.

ON EDIT: Don't forget that the executable you want is HH.exe, usually found in the C:\Windows directory.

thanks again!, I'm not terribly versed in this so I'm not necessarily sure how one calls that w/ a command line arg via execute. I'm really primarily interested in utilizing the function of showhelp that allows you to pass topic keyword information so that when someone dbl right clicks on an object I can pass the this.object name as a topic string that will pull up the chm file with the relevent or default topic open - is it possible to do this using the execute method?
thanks again for all your help!

Place this in a script and run it. This should open the Wordpad CHM Help file on your PC if it is in the same place as mine. Note the double slashes that are required in the path. That should point you in the right direction.

There is not an argument you can pass like this for specific topics within a CHM file that I can find. If you want that you may have to look into DDO but I personally don't think the benefit is worth the effort.

You might consider writing individual CHM files for specific topics, then linking to them by inserting code into the mouseDouble event of the element for which you want context help, then passing the CHM name on to this bit of code.