Help on Help
The MS Help2 viewer is packed with features that are not always obvious. Kris Houser has posted an article about how to best use the RAD Studio Help. My favorite tip is how to use the Tools/Options/Help/Online dialog box to specify whether Search will include external sources or only RAD Studio help. By default the search traverses a variety of sources that are not of interest to me, so I restrict my searches to the "Local Help" that CodeGear provides. Thanks Kris!
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Posted by Dee Elling on February 7th, 2008 under Uncategorized |23 Responses to “Help on Help”
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Server Response from: dnrh1.codegear.com
February 7th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Why do I do help on help? Help should be like Delphi 6, Delphih 7 help systems: simple, fool proof! I still use Delphi 6 help for BDS 2006 (where I can’t find anything at all!)
February 7th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Why are the Help Systems so hard to use and find what I need these days, why are features so hard to find in the new overloaded help systems, why do I still use Delphi 6 help for Delphi2007 and have a need purchase Delphi Basics? Really thought all this would have been sorted long ago. Sometimes companies can’t admit its not working and just improve upon good things that work. All too often they wreck them because in theory they should be better. The above link to "how to best use the RAD Studio Help." is not launching for me, is it also broken?
February 7th, 2008 at 11:59 am
PeteW - the link has a superfluous ‘http//’ in it; delete that, and it works.
February 7th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I am using Delphi 6 help (with Delphi 6 of course). I am happy!
February 7th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I appreciate your efforts, the content really has improved much.
But the Help viewer is still so bloody *SLOW*. The first time the whole Delphi IDE is blocked for maybe 20 - 30 seconds, afterwards it often still needs 3 - 7 seconds.
Often I am using Ctrl+F1 with the "Delphi 7 help for BDS expert" (http://cc.codegear.com/item/23948) and my old D6 help files. How can it be that this (hack) is a much agreeabler experience than the standard help viewer?
IMHO all your efforts are worthless if the help is not fast. MS might be blamed for the slow help viewer, but all I - as an end user - is interested in, is a fast help. Pls. do something about it!!
February 7th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
RAD Studio 2007 HELP is less then helpful. Still using Delphi 7 Help to find answers really fast.
February 7th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
I agree 100% with everything Lars said. For me the most annoying "improvements" are the new totally un-navigable properties/methods/events pages.
Ah, and after using the help system form some time, the dexplore.exe processes consume hundreds of megs of memory. Winhlp32.exe gets along with some megs only.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
D2007 Help is beyond help.
Lars has said it all -nearly.
I would expect most new D2007 users to come from previous versions of Delphi. I have quite a few component suites with .hlp context sensitive help files - while I can upgrade the components to D2007 I dont appear to be able to do anything with their help files. Unfortunately I bought D2007 and it lies idle while I carry on with D6 because of the lack of a decent help system.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
A lot of people agree with you Pavel. I really miss the example code. I guess this lurch to embrace M$ "technologies" is putting the Kylix 4 timeline much further into the future.
February 8th, 2008 at 2:34 am
The 2006 and 2007 help is a disgrace. Utterly totally useless.
It’s performance is slower than using google manually by several orders of magnitude, and the results are usually a _LOT_ better through google.
Configure it to first search locally, then search online. On my laptop the online results arrive before the local search most of the time.
Context search frequently doesn’t work, language filtering doesn’t work (at least not by default and certainly not logically).
Open the search dialog, select only Delphi/C++ and search for "conditional define" (note that I avoid setting technology - why should I ? - I want Delphi stuff). How many of the results are Delphi related? How many of them give information related to conditional defines in Delphi? Of the topics that do, how many of the topics link to related information such as compiler directives?
Assuming that you eventually find the List of Compiler Directives, you get a demonstration of a less than optimal presentation format. A list of directives that actually dont include the name of the directive, and directive descriptions that don’t refer to related directives.
If I am in the Win32 Delphi personality, I don’t want C#, .NET, VB, or C++ information.
To defend the search, there seems to be some sort of learning capability - so a re-search might help. However, this "focusing" seems to be forgotten once you close the help system.
Endless collection of topics that are incomplete.
ms-help://borland.bds5/delphivclwin32/StdCtrls_TComboBox_Font.html
Should I laugh, cry or rage in anger? Not even the most basic component properties are properly documented.
Nearly ALL topics lack proper linking to related information or "see also" information. High level overview topics are not easily accessible, and examples are not really prevalent.
Scrap it and make the documentation wiki-based and allow registered users to contribute to the wiki. Instrument the wiki with a proper search engine. Strike a deal with MS about linking to MS related information in the MSDN site.
Anything is better than the current waste of diskspace.
February 8th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Codegear please listen to your customers.
http://dev.newswhat.com/amsg/borland.public.delphi.non-technical/47aba3f9@newsgroups.borland.com.html
Alexandre Machado and Paul Scott point out exactly why your business model regarding the choice and integration of help in your products is flawed.
Please listen to your customers - Borland did not and you know what happened to them.
February 8th, 2008 at 6:51 am
My favorite "feature" of MS help is the cute little underlines under some letters in labels. Normally that means that Alt+ will focus the labelled control. Not so in MS Help.
They just have such a sense of humor at MS. You got me!
February 8th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I have to agree with the other commentors. I don’t want to read the help on help. I just want to hit F1 and have relevant information appear instantly. Please remove the MS SDK Helps from the current system and put them in a separate file that can be queried only if wanted. 9 times out of 10, I’m looking for Delphi information not MS specific information.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:21 am
Delete the whole ms-html2-docomatic-.net-explorer stuff or burn the hard disk. Then take the good old Delphi 7 Help and includes the stuff added since D7.
February 9th, 2008 at 3:56 am
Are we all ‘anti’ the Help system or has anyone got anything positive to say about it compared with the D7 help? I cannot think of anything.
February 10th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I don’t understand that. CG is wasting so much effort on this. Nobody wants this useless docomatic help file and the slow .net explorer viewer. They are against their own customers!
February 10th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Please give us the delphi 7 help system !
February 11th, 2008 at 4:09 am
PeteW and CR, thanks for pointing out the bad link! I fixed it.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Hi folks,
* The CHMs are posted at http://cc.codegear.com/ProdCat.aspx?prodid=1&catid=9
* We are serious about restoring the content, particularly the examples. I truly wish it could be done overnight. Our efforts are focussed on the content first.
* I am actively working on a wiki solution. Wikis are GREAT! And we’ll need to be able to port the new content from a wiki back into the standalone, offline help.
* Nick and I have been and are discussing the future of MSHelp2.
Thanks for all of your comments!
February 13th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
If Codegear are going to Eclipse and Wiki everything what will they have left to sell?
February 14th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Thanks for the update Dee. You have made great strides in restoring the help that used to be. Still more to go. Given the sluggardly responsiveness of the current help system (sometimes more than 2 minutes to appear (Vista 2.4 GHz Dual Core, 2 GB RAM)), I hope you can find a speedier replacement. I used to complain mightily about the D7 help. Little did I know what was down the pike! Fortunately CG has groups.google.com, and fulltextsearch.com for developers to use until you get the F1 help working properly.
February 14th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Interesting question about wiki, since CodeGear does not sell its docs separate from the dev tools. I think of wiki as a way of expanding information, using an interface that is faster and more accessible to online users. Offline users benefit from the info that gets cycled back into the offline Help.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
What about a help system written in Delphi? The MSHelp2 system sucks.
Warren