Using:
Lazarus 1.8.2
FPC 3.0.4
Windows 8.1 64-bit
These items have bugged me for a while, and the never seem to get fixed in new
releases. If someone can confirm, I'll post to the bug tracker. Some are Lazarus
related, some are FPC related... so I may need some advice on categories in the
bug tracker.
Installing Help files
I can understand why help files are not installed by default with the IDE (kind of).
But instructions in ($LazarusDir)/docs/chm are not up-to-date. They've never been
updated to reflect the new location for chm files.
PATCH ($LazarusDir)/docs/chm/readmechm.txt
13c13
< - Copy the chms to docs/html in the Lazarus directory.
---
> - Copy any chm, xct, or kwd files to docs/chm in the Lazarus directory.
17a18,19
> Note that toc.chm is not loaded by the LHelp CHM viewer at the present time.
>
In addition, the Lazarus IDE should have a Help > "Installing Help Files" item that
explains where to get CHM files and how to install them. Or, at a minimum, a link
to the wiki page at
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Installing_Help_in_the_IDE.
LHelp Issues
The LHelp CHM viewer application places extraneous "[]" characters in the title for
CHM files.
($LazarusDir)/components/chm/lhelp/chmcontentprovider.pas (line 744)
TChmContentProvider.UpdateTitle wrongly includes "[" and "]" characters in the
title even when no tree-structured path info is available.
It could be argued that the concept is not needed at all - since CHM files are
self-contained and toc.chm is ignored. But that's a different issue.
CHM Issues
fpdoc.chm
prog.chm
ref.chm
user.chm
toc.chm
All of these CHM files do not have a title in the lhelp Tabs control.
They all also have a "missing index.html!" message in the status area.
It could be that the Default Topic for the generated help file is not set correctly. In
MS HTML Help Workshop it would be an entry in the project file, and yes I know
these were not generated with HHW.
(see attached pictures lhelp1.png, lhelp2.png, and lhelp3,png)
toc.chm is related. No content is displayed by default unless opened
using the File > Open menu items.
(see attached pictures toc1.png and toc2.png)
CHM Content issues
prog.chm
ref.chm
user.chm
These files contain non-English content in an English document. They also have
content encoded using an encoding that cannot be displayed in UTF8. But since we have no access to the .xml origin documents - I can't be sure of encoding.
(see attached picture chm1.png)
Any advice about bug categories appreciated.