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[solved]How to install help?
andyH:
First post - so a bit of background. Cut my teeth on Turbo pascal in the 1980's (V1 - when it first came out, loved Borland), wrote a fair amount of code, probably around 20k lines. Now using it again. I'm running lazarus 1.8.2 installed under linux (mint 19.0) and have written a few hundred lines of code - strictly console apps. Now starting to come to grips with GUI apps, and that's where my problem starts - my mindset is SSADM and am struggling with OOP.
So I need help, for starters, help within the ide. Installed the lazarus-doc-1.8 package via the software manager in mint.
* Help > help leads to an empty window where I find I can open a .chm file - searched and found /usr/share/doc/lazarus/1.82/lcl. Seems to provide a lot, but as example can't find Tmemo. Are there other .chm files. And how do you make it persistent so it opens this file automatically.
* Help > Online help : The help database "StartPage" was unable to find file "/usr/lib/lazarus/1.8.2//docs/index.html". So where is it? I suspect a problem with the //.
* Tools > options > help options and external - I have no idea what to do here?
* Did find http://wiki.freepascal.org/Installing_Help_in_the_IDE - not much help, written around windows not linux.
Did have a rummage around and found a README.txt in /usr/lib/lazarus/1.82/components/chmhelp - "This is a basic HOWTO for integrating lhelp into the Lazarus IDE". Tried following instructions but 'Components Menu choose "Open Package File"' - no, but have package > open package file. Opened "chmhelppkg.lpk". Now click "Install" - no install button, did file compile - ok, then use > install. Rebuild lazarus - yes, failed - cannot find lazcontroldsgn used by lazarus... If it worked I suspect it would have failed as not running as root and no permissions to write in /usr/lib????
So you can see I'm confused and would appreciate some help in getting help to work.
Secondary question - any good reference books or other sources on lazarus? I have a couple of beginner/idiot's guides on lazarus, but what I need is reference info. As an example, Tstringlists - what are all the methods, etc. available to use with them, or the same with Tmemo, and so on. If I know a method exists I can google its usage, but if I don't know it exists...
Thanks in advance.
dsiders:
I know nothing about Linux Mint, so...
Help files should be installed in the $(lazarusdir)/docs/html or $(lazarusdir)/docs/chm directories. If they're somewhere else on your system, that's a LM packaging issue. Copy or move them to the correct directory. Or SymLink them if you love a challenge. It sounds like the Help Viewer (LHelp) is already installed.
That should be all that's needed.
Hope that helps :)
john horst:
I would avoid using the Package Manager (Deb / Mint / Ubuntu release) version of FPC / Lazarus. Use the Stable Debs from SourceForge or the Devel Versions. Things are seriously broke, bad paths and dated with OS release packages.
avra:
I would use fpcupdeluxe to install Lazarus and FPC. It has an option to include help and build help viewer. Basically you get out of the box ready to use help.
andyH:
--- Quote ---I would avoid using the Package Manager (Deb / Mint / Ubuntu release) version of FPC / Lazarus.
--- End quote ---
On this particular laptop I did install from the package manager, and apart from my problems with help, it works (at least with the stuff I've done to date). Did have lots of problems doing the same with mint 18.x - lazarus + fpc was seriously broke and installing from downloaded debs was the only way I got it working. On another laptop think I've got 1.8.4 so must have installed from deb.
fpcupdeluxe sounds promising, downloaded it, so I'll give that a try. Failing that I'll re-install from debs.
Final, maybe stupid, question - what is meant by $(lazarusdir)? To me it's command substitution in bash, so I would expect echo "Location is $(lazarusdir) " to generate some output, it doesn't so I'm wrong.
Thanks for the responses.
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