Using Four Winds Help

Four Winds provides four ways to get more information on the game. For instant instructions related to different game situations (like discarding or claiming a tile, effect of a menu command, etc.), check the message line at the bottom of the status bar (note that the Scores dialog box has its own message line). When customizing the rules, you can use the context help to quickly display a description of how different controls change the rules. For in-depth instructions to all features of Four Winds, use the HTML documentation. For general introduction to different versions of Mah Jong, use the Four Winds Mah Jong Knowledge Base that is available on the Internet. 

Status bar

The message line at the bottom of the status bar displays information related to game situations at hand. E.g., when you move a mouse cursor over a tile, the name of the tile is displayed in the message line. The message line also shows instructions for basic game situations like discarding, claiming, progress of exchange of tiles (Charleston), choosing menu commands, assigning tile values for jokers, etc.

Information that is displayed on the message line is partly governed by user interface options. E.g., if extended discard information is enabled, you can move the mouse cursor over a grayed-out discard to display on the message line the name of the player who claimed that tile.

Context help

Context help is available in all dialog boxes having a question mark button at the right end of the title bar of the window. To display a description of functionality of a control in a dialog box, click the question mark button and then the control you wish to know more about. You can access the context help also by pressing F1 while a control has the input focus, or by clicking a control with the right mouse button and choosing What's This on the context menu. For certain controls (e.g. the scoring lists), pressing F1 gives a description for an item that is currently selected within a control, while clicking the question mark button gives a general description of the control itself.

HTML documentation

You can access the HTML documentation by choosing Contents on the Help menu (or by clicking the Help button in the Preferences dialog box).

The help window consists of four tabs:

• Contents. Displays a hierarchical tree of the help topics. This is useful if you want to have a comprehensive view of certain aspect of the game. Related topics appear under a common header so it is easy to learn the variations. Note that you can locate the position of a single help topic within the tree by clicking the Locate button on the toolbar at the top of the window.
• Index. Provides a list of most common terms (keywords). E.g., if you want to know more about jokers, enter "joker" in the keyword box at the top of the window, then double click one of the found topics in the list below.
• Search. Lets you search for help topics based on appearance of specified keywords in the help topics. E.g., specifying "Dora" would display about 20 topics where the word "Dora" appears. You can also use Boolean expressions and quotation marks to make the search more selective. E.g., "Dora" AND "Dead Wall" would show only the topics where both the keywords "Dora" and "Dead Wall" appear in the same file. The searched keywords appear highlighted in the found topics.
• Favorites. Lets you save topics to be easily accessed in the future. To save the currently selected topic as a favorite, click the Add button at the bottom of the window. To display or remove a favorite topic, click the equivalent button at the bottom of the window. The favorites are saved between the sessions.

Note that the HTML help documentation also includes a comprehensive glossary, bibliography and a link collection.  

HTML documentation on the Internet

HTML documentation is available also on the Internet at Four Winds web site, though with reduced features. The online HTML documentation can be used as an alternative for the default documentation (4W2HelpEng.chm). Unlike the default HTML documentation, which depends on Microsoft's HTML Help control and requires Internet Explorer to be installed, the online documentation is based on a Java applet and can accordingly be read with any browser supporting Java and cascading style sheet (e.g., with Netscape 6.2 or later).

Four Winds automatically suggests a connection to the online documentation, when a user tries to access help (e.g., by choosing Contents on the Help menu) and the default HTML Help based documentation cannot be accessed for one reason or another. You can also access the online documentation directly by choosing Four Winds Online Documentation on the Help menu.

Once connected, the online documentation can be downloaded and installed on a local system, after which it can be accessed from within Four Winds by choosing Contents on the Help menu.

Note: If you install alternative HTML documentation on your local system, you will no longer be able to access the default HTML documentation from within Four Winds. To revert to the default help system, you need to remove the alternative help documentation or change the name of the folder where it is installed. The alternative documentation is installed in Help folder under the Four Winds main program folder, so to force Four Winds to use the original HTML documentation you would either delete this folder or change its name (e.g., to "Java Help").

Four Winds Mah Jong Knowledge Base

The fourth method to learn more about the game of Mah Jong is to connect to the Internet and visit Four Winds Mah Jong Knowledge Base. This site provides a traditional "rulebook" approach to most common versions of Mah Jong and is especially useful, if you are new to the game.

Related topics:
Using hints