The Open32 Resource and Help functions recognize only OS/2 Resource files and OS/2 Help files. To be able to use your Windows Resource (RC extension) and Help files you need to convert them to OS/2 format using any of the existing converter tools. After conversion to OS/2, you should check the converted Resource and Help files for functionality and look and feel.
SMART converts both Windows Resource and Help files to OS/2 format. While SMART does a good conversion job, you will need to use a viewer to look at the converted files. You can also use the Borland RC converter (available with their OS/2 C++ compiler) or Universal Resource Editor (URE) that is available on the OS/2 Developer's Connection. Hyperwise Lite is another tool that helps you convert Windows help files to OS/2 format. It also includes a viewer. Hyperwise Lite provides many other Rich Text Format (RTF) to OS/2 Help file conversion functions that are not included in Hyperwise today. Because OS/2 Resource and Help functions are different from their Windows counterparts, you might need to further modify your Help and Resource files to obtain similar functionality on both platforms. If your source code is dependent on the structure of these Resource files, you might need to modify your source code for OS/2. Identify this modified code as platform-specific code, because this modification is always necessary.
Also, the converted Resource files need to use OS/2 header files, not Open32 header files. Because Open32 common code expects Open32 header files and Resource files expect OS/2 header files, an include that is shared by the Open32 code and Resource files must avoid using either Open32 or OS/2 header files. In summary, pay close attention to header files that are used by both Open32 common source code and Resource files.
The Windows 32-bit Help and OS/2 Help functionality are dramatically different. Due to the difference in Help behavior, you must understand the limitations of the conversion tools. Information on these limitations is provided in the documentation for the Help conversion tools. You need to understand what needs to be modified in the converted Help files to obtain similar functionality. The macro calls made in RTF files need to be closely monitored because the conversion tools might not support all the RTF macros. Help can be one of the areas that requires fine tuning to get similar functionality across Windows 32-bit and OS/2 environments.