[Lazarus] Lazarus IDE help and Application help formats

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:32:25 +0200
Graeme Geldenhuys <graemeg at opensoft.homeip.net> wrote:

> Mattias Gärtner wrote:
> > 
> > Why do you write that?
> > a) you don't know it
> > b) you don't like it
> 
> Clearly I don't know how to use application help, if it exists.
> 
> See attached image...
> 
> If I write my own LCL based application with Lazarus, as shown in the 
> screenshot. How do I implement help for my application.

See 
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Add_Help_to_Your_Application

 
>[...]
> Test:
>   - Put focus it TEdit and press F1. --->  NOTHING HAPPENS.
>   - Click the Help button.   --->  NOTHING HAPPENS

Someone broke the example. I fixed it.

 
> How do I implement help for my application?
> What must the help format be? HLP, CHM, HTML, ???

Your choice. :)
At the moment the LCL provides a help database for URLs and
a viewer that simply starts the default browser. The URLs are html
files in the example, but of course it can be any URL.

The IDEIntf has a class for fpdoc help databases.

The package ChmHelpPkg provides a viewer for chm files by starting and
remote controlling lhelp.


> What help viewer is it going to use?
>    - I'm running Linux, so no CHM help viewer comes standard.

The chm viewer lhelp is part of lazarus.


>[...]


Mattias