Comments on: Help Update #3 is out

By: Luigi D. Sandon

Luigi D. Sandon — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:52:08 +0000

Try to search in the help simple keywords like "Single", "Double", "Record". It’s impossibile to find anything related to Delphi.
You would have to search for "real data types" or "structured types" - not what a beginner would look for.

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By: Jeff C.

Jeff C. — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:29:23 +0000

I often refer friends to download the trial to get a feel for Delphi. I always wonder when I see these announcements if the trial versions get the same attention, that is, get slipstreamed soon after with the same hotfixes and help updates.

I would hate that a potential customer is turned away by a bug that happens to already be fixed.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:59:18 +0000

Installed and tried the new help. It is not much better than that in Delphi 2005, 2006 or the previous verison in 2007. Still too many references to C++, or .Net, when I am only using Delphi for windows. The help on Delphi 7 and earlier versions was much more useful. Unless you know exactly what you are looking for it is virtually impossible to find information, e.g., try finding how to convert a string to an integer without already knowing that the function IntToStr does this.

By: DelphiUser

DelphiUser — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:18:47 +0000

Installed and tried it last night.
MAJOR improvement! Thanks a lot!

By: Nick Hodges

Nick Hodges — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:19:02 +0000

Anders –

Here’s what I got from our install folks:

——————–
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Codegear\BDS\6.0\AutoRun]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Codegear\BDS\6.0\AutoRun\UpdateCheck]
"ProgramToRun"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Application Data\\{PUT_FOLDER_NAME_WITH_GUID_HERE}\\Setup.exe"
"CommandLine"="/update"

Replace the GUID with the corresponding folder where the installer cache keep its files on that particular system.

By: Nick Hodges

Nick Hodges — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:51:25 +0000

Anders –

Unfortunately, there is no way to turn this back on after you choose to not do it during the install.

Actually, there may be a reg key for this — I’ll find out.

Nick

By: Anders Pedersen

Anders Pedersen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:13:01 +0000

Hi Nick

You wrote:
"If you don’t have the IDE set to automatically check for updates"

But I cant find where to turn on this function?

Anders

By: Frank Burleigh

Frank Burleigh — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:26:03 +0000

How can we tell whether the IDE is set to check on its own?

The start menu items:

- Check for Updates
- Modify/repair/uninstall

fail for me with access violation or "resource not found" type problems. Control panel "change" was ok for Help. I’m downloading the help update now. And as others have said, thanks so much for the continued improvement of the dox; that is a great aid.

By: DaveK

DaveK — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:38:45 +0000

Nick,

This is great. Any chance we will soon be going to the next level of allowing us to either only install the sections of Help that we need/want or support us in manipulating the appropriate files to attain the same goal. For example, all I want/need is:
* Rad Studio (Common)
* Rad Studio (Win32)
* Rad Studio VCL Reference
* Rave Reports
all the remaining topics, a lot of files/data, are simply in the way. Which is quite annoying.

Even if it’s as simple as grouping each topic group in h2reg.ini under appropriate section comments so that I can comment out all the various files that make up that topic [ie Internet Direct (Indy) 10 or .Not Framework SDK], make any necessary additional adjustments to Master.HxC and RADStudioFilter.xml, with your help, and recompile the help to be what "I" need.

Many thanks,
DaveK

By: Leonard Gallion

Leonard Gallion — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:12:01 +0000

First, a BIG thanks for keeping up the emphasis on improving the help system, the examples are of particular use to me. However upgrading with InstallAware is a pain (i.e. slow, leaves huge files behind, fails with weird error messages), so those rollup ISOs are much appreciated (that way you only have to suffer through InstallAware once). Maybe you could sponsor a contest to create the next Codegear installer or find an open source project to contribute code to until it reaches the feature set you need.

By: DelphiUser

DelphiUser — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:56:01 +0000

I never quite understood why the D7 help couldn’t have just been updated for D2007 and issued. In fact, having it in PDF or even just HTML would be so much less bother.

By: Richard King

Richard King — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:53:53 +0000

Sorry, I was wrong - I too have a 317MB folder under Documents named Rad_Studio_Help_Downloads with zip and other files in it. Have now deleted it!

I have to agree Installaware is pretty awful — we gave it a try — but reverted to Innosetup for our own software. To be fair we found all the other big name installers equally cumbersome.

By: Richard King

Richard King — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:47:16 +0000

Worked perfectly for me — and under Vista — just took a while. Only thing left in (My) Documents was an ini file. Help/About shows *in words* that Dec update and Apr Help are installed. Couldn’t ask for more on this front.

The help content looks much better — lots of examples now — but then I’ve been avoiding it for a while. Still would love you guys to bring the Help window to the front when I choose Help rather than having to go to the Task Bar.

By: Anonymous Hippopotamus

Anonymous Hippopotamus — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:08:41 +0000

MJ Marshall has it right. Nick, you guys have really messed up the whole installation thing. Hint: Look towards Microsoft.

I’d love to see a blog post in response to this Joel On Software thread:

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.619922

I love Delphi but I’ve never seen or tried D2007 because the damn installer keeps failing. If you can’t get the installation right then what else is screwed up?

By: C Johnson

C Johnson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:04:29 +0000

Would it seem totally insane to ask for a top level page that shows the help file version information? That way we can more easily confirm that an update worked correctly.

I made the mistake of using REPAIR from the GUI instead of thinking and reading the instructions to run with the /upgrade command. Now I’m going to have to do it again just to get a sense of security that it worked correctly.

By: M J Marshall

M J Marshall — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:03:45 +0000

Why does this help update leave 300MB of files under My Documents after installing?! Why does it even use My Documents? On my system, My Documents resides on a small 1GB partition, so using it for setup files is really a dumb idea!

Honestly, Nick, why can’t you CodeGear guys sort out a proper installer?!

By: C Johnson

C Johnson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:24:49 +0000

Time for a updated master install image?

Just a thought…

By: Nick Hodges

Nick Hodges — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:41:43 +0000

Rick –

If it says that you need the December update, then I’d recommend applying that.

Nick

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:17:59 +0000

Just ran "Check for Updates" for RAD Studio 2007. It showed "Apr08 help"; however, it also shows "December 2007 update" which I have already previously applied. Is the "Decemeber 2007 update" re-showing as a result of applying April hotfix??

Does hotfix need to be reapplied after help update3?

Rick.