In line with the philosophy of making applications easy to use through the provision of an intuitive, graphical user interface, it is extremely useful to have an application provide online, context-sensitive help and tutorial facilities to the end user. Such facilities further encourage learning by exploration.
Presentation Manager provides such capabilities in the form of the Information Presentation Facility (IPF), which allows help panels to be generated and displayed in help windows under Presentation Manager. These help windows are linked with the normal application windows in such a way that when the user presses the "Help" key, selects a "Help" item from the menu bar or presses a "Help" button in a dialog box, the appropriate help window is displayed.
In addition to providing online help for Presentation Manager applications, IPF can also be used in a stand-alone mode, to provide online documentation for applications, or for business procedures that are independent of any single application. Using capabilities provided by IPF, an online procedure manual may initiate appropriate applications, thus providing a "real-life" tutorial capability for new or inexperienced users.
This chapter will describe the use of IPF for creating help libraries and online documents, and examine some ways in which IPF may improve the ease-of-use of Presentation Manager applications.