I recently installed Delphi 2005 for the first time (OK, so I'm a tad bit behind the times).

When I drop a component on a VCL form (like TEdit), then highlight that component and press F1, up pops a quasi-help-browser window with a URL:

ms-help://borland.bds3/bds3start/html/intro.htm

and the message "Cannot find server".

What happened to the good old days old HLP and CHM files, which display relavent help for the active component item?

So what does a person have to do to get good help these days in Delphi 2005?

Philip

>So what does a person have to do to get good help these days in Delphi 2005?

Buy D7 or earlier

Roy Lambert

> {quote:title=Philip Kapusta wrote:}{quote}
> So what does a person have to do to get good help these days in Delphi 2005?

Buy Delphi 2009 or later.  Still not perfect, but much improved, and an update just came out.

There are also updated versions of the help available in different formats.  The latest help update soesn't seem to be there yet.

http://docs.codegear.com/

If you really like the Delphi 7 help, I understand there's a way to integrate this into the new IDEs, but I haven't done it myself.

--
Regards
Bruce McGee
Glooscap Software

> Buy D7 or earlier

I have a copy of every Delphi verison from v1 to v8.

How does that help me with D2005?

Phil

> If you really like the Delphi 7 help, I understand there's a way to integrate this into the new IDEs, but I haven't done it myself.

Well, I'm not in love with any version, I simply want something close to relevant when I press F1 from within the IDE.   If I highlight the word TEdit in the IDE and press F1, I would expect something related to the TEdit to appear...not a "Cannot find server" message.

Phil

Philip Kapusta wrote:

> > If you really like the Delphi 7 help, I understand there's a way to
> > integrate this into the new IDEs, but I haven't done it myself.
> 
> Well, I'm not in love with any version, I simply want something close
> to relevant when I press F1 from within the IDE.   If I highlight the
> word TEdit in the IDE and press F1, I would expect something related
> to the TEdit to appear...not a "Cannot find server" message.

Codegear (well, it still was Borland at the time of D2005) had to move
to HTML Help 2 for the online help since Microsoft simply did not
supply the Windows and .NET-specific parts of the help in any other
format. Since that time the viewer (MS Document Explorer) has moved to
at least one new version and if you install a MS product (like Visual
Studio) that uses a newer version of the Document Explorer it will
usually set some relevant registry keys to the new version, which
causes programs relying on the old version to fail to find the help
viewer. That is the source of your error message.

For D2006 and 2007 the following used to fix it.

Problems with BDS/Delphi2006/Delphi2007 help not working

      1. Launch REGEDIT.
      2. Locate: My Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\DExplore.exe
      3. Locate entry: AppID (it's REGSZ value).
      4. Change it to: {4A79114D-19E4-11d3-B86B-00C04F79F802}

MAKE A BACKUP OF THE OLD KEY (export to reg file) FIRST!

You can also download the help in HTML Help 1 (CHM) files from
http://docs.codegear.com/products/rad_studio/
It is possible to integrate these into the IDE with a free add-in, but
I have lost the link to that, sorry.

-- 
Peter Below (TeamB)  
Don't be a vampire (http://slash7.com/pages/vampires), 
use the newsgroup archives :
http://www.tamaracka.com/search.htm
http://groups.google.com

Philip


The quality of help is better. It doesn't integrate but at least you can find things. I often have to use D6 help to find something for D2006.

Roy Lambert

> For D2006 and 2007 the following used to fix it.
>       3. Locate entry: AppID (it's REGSZ value).
>       4. Change it to: {4A79114D-19E4-11d3-B86B-00C04F79F802}

Peter,

Thanks, but...  there's nothing to change.  The AppID already is {4A79114D-19E4-11d3-B86B-00C04F79F802}

Also, I never installed any Microsoft Visual "whatever".
 
Phil

Philip Kapusta wrote:

> > For D2006 and 2007 the following used to fix it.
> >       3. Locate entry: AppID (it's REGSZ value).
> >       4. Change it to: {4A79114D-19E4-11d3-B86B-00C04F79F802}
> 
> Peter,
> 
> Thanks, but...  there's nothing to change.  The AppID already is
> {4A79114D-19E4-11d3-B86B-00C04F79F802}
> 
> Also, I never installed any Microsoft Visual "whatever".

Mh, i failed to ask: after you get the error you mentioned in your
original post, do you still get the document explorer window (just not
with the correct help item displayed), or does the document explorer
close or never open?

The problem with this beast is that it can be configured to search not
only the local help files but also web-based sources. And by default
*this is enabled*! If you don't have an active internet connection this
not only makes the help system start up still slower (and it starts
slow enough on XP), it can also make it fail to start properly at all.

If you can get the help viewer to start at all (from the IDEs Help menu
or the shortcut in the BDS start menu entry), select Tools->Options
from the viewers menu. Open the "help" node on the left and click the
"online" subnode. On the right, make sure to check the "try local only,
not online" radiobutton and OK the dialog.

-- 
Peter Below (TeamB)  
Don't be a vampire (http://slash7.com/pages/vampires), 
use the newsgroup archives :
http://www.tamaracka.com/search.htm
http://groups.google.com

> after you get the error you mentioned in your
> original post, do you still get the document explorer window

Peter,

Yes, I get the document explorer window.  It shows 'ms-help://borland.bds3/bds3start/html/intro.htm' in the address bar, all my Internet Explorer bookmarks/favorites in the left column, and a "No page to Display. Action canceled Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might be temporarily unavailable." message in the main body section.

> If you don't have an active internet connection this
> not only makes the help system start up still slower

I have an always on cable modem connection.

> If you can get the help viewer to start at all (from the IDEs Help menu
> or the shortcut in the BDS start menu entry), select Tools->Options
> from the viewers menu. Open the "help" node on the left and click the
> "online" subnode. On the right, make sure to check the "try local only,
> not online" radiobutton and OK the dialog.

You've lost me.  There is no such "Help" node on the left.   From within MDExploer 7.0 I can click Tools > Options but in the window that appears, there are no "nodes".  Just 4 items in the left column:

Fonts and Colors
International Settings
Keyboard
Web browser.

There's no "help" or "online" anything in the options window.

Phil

Philip Kapusta wrote:

> > after you get the error you mentioned in your
> > original post, do you still get the document explorer window
> 
> Peter,
> 
> Yes, I get the document explorer window.  It shows
> 'ms-help://borland.bds3/bds3start/html/intro.htm' in the address bar,
> all my Internet Explorer bookmarks/favorites in the left column, and
> a "No page to Display. Action canceled Internet Explorer was unable
> to link to the Web page you requested. The page might be temporarily
> unavailable." message in the main body section.

Oh joy. 

> 
> You've lost me.  There is no such "Help" node on the left.   From
> within MDExploer 7.0 I can click Tools > Options but in the window
> that appears, there are no "nodes".  Just 4 items in the left column:
> 
> Fonts and Colors
> International Settings
> Keyboard
> Web browser.

Argh, sorry. I was looking at the D2007 help since I don't have D2005
installed. This is obviously using a newer version of the document
explorer.
D2006 (which I happen to have installed still) uses the old version and
that did no support this type of online search.

OK, last try <g>. 

Find the folder the help files are in. If BDS 3 is similar to  BDS4 in
this regard there should be a "help" folder under the BDS root, e.g.

C:\Program files\Borland\BDS\3.0\Help

Either on this folder or in a subfolder ("common" for BDS 4) you should
see a program named RegHelp.exe. This is a console program, so open a
console window and navigate to the folder the program is in. If you run
it as

  reghelp /?

it will give you a help screen. Read it, the number 7 i give below is
what would be used for BDS 4 and it may be different for BDS 3.

Do a 
  
 reghelp -7

to uninstall the help, then a 

 reghelp 7

to reinstall it. See if that fixes your problem. The first start of the
document explorer will take ages after this since it rebuilds some
indices, so don't be surprised.


-- 
Peter Below (TeamB)  
Don't be a vampire (http://slash7.com/pages/vampires), 
use the newsgroup archives :
http://www.tamaracka.com/search.htm
http://groups.google.com

> Find the folder the help files are in. If BDS 3 is similar to  BDS4 in
> this regard there should be a "help" folder under the BDS root, e.g.
> 
> C:\Program files\Borland\BDS\3.0\Help

Peter,

The only thing in C:\Program Files\Borland\BDS\3.0\Help is a lone folder called Thirdparty, which does not have any file named RegHelp.exe.  Other than this Thirdparty folder, there are no files in C:\Program Files\Borland\BDS\3.0\Help

I also did a File Search for reghelp.* under C:\Program Files\Borland and found nothing.

At this point I'm beginning to wonder whether I even installed the Help files when I installed D2005.

I'm going to have to get out the installation CD and go through the install again.

Philip

This is getting worse and worse.

I tried reinstalling D2005 from the 3 CDs.  On CD #2, at the 2/3rd mark, the install spits up an error "Internal error 2920 - readme.txt_15"   Googling "Internal error 2920" gives me not a bit of useful information.  So I had no choice but to hit OK and the install when through its rollback.

I gave up on the reinstalltion.  However, I did notice that the CD seems to be laid out like my hard drive, with a "program files" folder, and a "borland" folder, and a "bds" folder, etc.  When I go to the "Help" folder I found files that do not reside on my hard drive.  This is odd, since the installation doesn't give you an option to NOT install the Help files.  But in any case, I simply dragged and dropped the Help folder and all its subfolders to my c: drive.

So then when I ran D2005 and highlighted a code word and pressed F1, up popped the help window, and instead of showing a server not found and error 404 message, I then got a .NET SDK page.  OK, so its an improvement, but .NET SDK has absolutely nothing to do with the word I highlighted.

So then I followed Peter's advice and ran reghelp -7  followed by reghelp 7.   Now, things are screwed up.  Now when I press F1 after highlighting a code word in the IDE, I get this error:  "OLE error 8004032E".  And Googling this returns zilch.   So now things are worse off than when I started.

>> "OLE error 8004032E". 

Note to all.  You can't rebuild the help files using reghelp.exe if you have Delphi 2005 up and running.  Shut down D2005 first.

Upon closing and restarting D2005, the OLE error no longer occurs.  And hurray, I get a help file to appear for SOME of the words in the IDE.

But now can someone explain why none of the hyperlinks in the help file work?  They're absolutely dead.  For example, when I F1 inside a Tmemo, I get this:

TMemo Class
 Properties | Methods | Events | All Members 

.....

....with "Properties" underlined, and "Methods" underlined, etc.

But hovering your mouse over any of these words/links and clicking does nothing.

> {quote:title=Philip Kapusta wrote:}{quote}
> But now can someone explain why none of the hyperlinks in the help file work?  They're absolutely dead.  For example, when I F1 inside a Tmemo, I get this:
> 
> TMemo Class
>  Properties | Methods | Events | All Members 
> 
> ....
> 
> ...with "Properties" underlined, and "Methods" underlined, etc.
> 
> But hovering your mouse over any of these words/links and clicking does nothing.

Because Delphi 2005 help is bad. There's nothing you can do about the broken links and missing content; they're simply not there. The Delphi 2005 help was the first help release under the new help system, and it was the beginning of a total redesign and rewrite of the help documentation. It was released incomplete and broken, has since been updated with Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, and Delphi 2009. Delphi 2009's version is the first version that's pretty good, and with the recently released Update 2 I hear i
t's even better.

Unfortunately, there's nothing to be done with Delphi 2005's help. It's four versions old, and therefore no longer maintained or supported. You'll have to either live with it, revert to using an older version of help (such as that in Delphi 7) that isn't context sensitive, or upgrade to a newer version of Delphi.

>> Delphi 2009's version is the first version that's pretty good, and with the recently released Update 2 I hear it's even better.

And CodeGear doesn't provide a D2009 version of the help file that will drop into place and replace the buggy/incomplete D2005 one?

Phil

Hello,

Philip Kapusta wrote:

> And CodeGear doesn't provide a D2009 version of the help file that
> will drop into place and replace the buggy/incomplete D2005 one?

you probably can't integrate it into Delphi 2005, but you can at least
download help files for more recent products as CHM or PDF at
http://docs.embarcadero.com/ . Delphi 2009 Help with Update 1 is
already available; IIRC, Help Update 2 is expected to go online soon.

-- 
Moritz

"Hey, it compiles! Ship it!"

> {quote:title=Philip Kapusta wrote:}{quote}
> >> Delphi 2009's version is the first version that's pretty good, and with the recently released Update 2 I hear it's even better.
> 
> And CodeGear doesn't provide a D2009 version of the help file that will drop into place and replace the buggy/incomplete D2005 one?
> 

Of course not. The Delphi 2009 version of the help uses a later version of the MS Help Viewer, and documents many, many things that aren't applicable to D2006 such as generics, anonymous methods, class helpers, for..in loops, operator overloading, methods in records, etc. If they dropped that into a version of Delphi that didn't support those things, they'd be bombarded with questions about why the help said they could do things they can't.

Your only solution here is to upgrade to Delphi 2009 or to use a different version of help (such as that from Delphi 7) that is pretty much compatible from a language and VCL standpoint, but won't integrate into the IDE.

<Ken White> wrote in message news:102790@forums.codegear.com...
>> {quote:title=Philip Kapusta wrote:}{quote}
>> But now can someone explain why none of the hyperlinks in the help file 
>> work?  They're absolutely dead.  For example, when I F1 inside a Tmemo, I 
>> get this:
>>
>> TMemo Class
>>  Properties | Methods | Events | All Members
>>
>> ....
>>
>> ...with "Properties" underlined, and "Methods" underlined, etc.
>>
>> But hovering your mouse over any of these words/links and clicking does 
>> nothing.
>
> Because Delphi 2005 help is bad. There's nothing you can do about the 
> broken links and missing content; they're simply not there. The Delphi 
> 2005 help was the first help release under the new help system, and it was 
> the beginning of a total redesign and rewrite of the help documentation. 
> It was released incomplete and broken, has since been updated with Delphi 
> 2006, Delphi 2007, and Delphi 2009. Delphi 2009's version is the first 
> version that's pretty good, and with the recently released Update 2 I hear 
> i
> t's even better.
>
> Unfortunately, there's nothing to be done with Delphi 2005's help. It's 
> four versions old, and therefore no longer maintained or supported. You'll 
> have to either live with it, revert to using an older version of help 
> (such as that in Delphi 7) that isn't context sensitive, or upgrade to a 
> newer version of Delphi.

D2005 is not the problem.
I have D2005 and clicked in a TMemo then pressed F1 and I got the correct 
help file and all the links work.