Help Update #3 is out
28 Apr
If you have your IDE set to check for updates, you should know by now that Help Update #3 is out — and this should be a good update. There should be loads of new content in the VCL section, and improvements throughout.
If you don’t have the IDE set to automatically check for updates, then do a:
Start|All Programs|CodeGear RAD Studio|Check for Updates
and it should tell you about the April 08 Help Update.
Or, if you prefer, you can download the Help Update from the Registered User Page.
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.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:17 pmRick –
If it says that you need the December update, then I’d recommend applying that.
Nick
April 28th, 2008 at 1:41 pmTime for a updated master install image?
Just a thought…
April 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pmWhy 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?!
April 28th, 2008 at 5:03 pmWould 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.
April 28th, 2008 at 5:04 pmMJ 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?
April 28th, 2008 at 9:08 pmWorked 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.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:47 pmSorry, 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.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:53 pmI 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.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:56 amFirst, 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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:12 amNick,
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,
April 29th, 2008 at 8:38 amDaveK
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:26 amHi 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
April 29th, 2008 at 11:13 amAnders –
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
April 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pmAnders –
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:19 pmInstalled and tried it last night.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:18 amMAJOR improvement! Thanks a lot!
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.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:59 amI 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.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:29 amHi !
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Thanks
Try to search in the help simple keywords like "Single", "Double", "Record". It’s impossibile to find anything related to Delphi.
May 4th, 2008 at 11:52 pmYou would have to search for "real data types" or "structured types" - not what a beginner would look for.