maxhelp - the standard questions…
hi,
I want to document my work, so I need to write a help file for each patcher. Here are my questions (I am using max 8):
• I remember from the past that help files are technically just regular patchers following a rigid name scheme in a dedicated folder, using a dedicated file extension. Is this still true?
• Where do I have to put the maxhelp files?
• Where if the objects belong to a project?
• The existing help files show the title in bigger font size. How do I do that?
• How can we make sure that the next person with the same questions will not again bother you but find the answer in the documentation?
Thank you for your help!
in modern max, you could put your helpfiles into the same package as your abstractions. search term in max: "about packages" documentation.
i would not include them in a project, even if that is really possible.
no idea how you can enhance them woith e xtras, but first fo all they are regular patches called .maxhelp at the end. old-style help patchers called .help must be renamed and eventually transformed to json to work.
you can create helpfiles also for groups of objects, for bpatchers, or for no object at all i.e. anything by sending "filename" -> prepend help -> pcontrol.
Thank you, this works for me.
The detail that stays open is the different font sizes in the existing help files, more exactly: In the first paragraph of the help files. After unlocking and clicking the first paragraph, it becomes visible that
• this part cannot be edited,
• this part is in fact not a comment but a "jsui" object. Unfortunately the help for jsui objects does not help at all.
• this part can be exported by copy&paste and will then show a json-like structure, but seemingly does not include the text itself, not even something that would look to me like a link to one of the texts.
But of course I would like to be able to also generate such a jsui first paragraph. So if you know more, just tell me… : - )
Thank you.
This jsui only works if you create a .maxref.xml file for your object. It includes the description text and everything you see in the "Reference" tab for an object. You'll find this files in the Max folder if you need examples.