IntroductionThis article shows how to manually update Delphi's help system files inorder to integrate your component etc help files with the Delphi IDE. Whatthe article is not about is how to write those help filesin the first place – there is plenty of information about that in theDelphi help.We take a slightly different approach in this article to that taken in theothers published here. This article is not explicitly about Delphiprogramming but about using the Delphi system.My tool uses the techniques presented here when installing help files intothe IDE.How it's donePreliminariesIn order for a help file to be able to be integrated into the Delphi IDE thehelp file must conform to the OpenHelp standard. Please see theDelphi help file on component writing for details on how to create a helpfile that meets this standard.Registering the help file with WindowsThe first thing we need to do is register the help file and any contentsfiles with Windows. To do this:.Copy the.hlp file (and any.cnt or.toc files) to a suitable folder on your computer and notethe folder's path.Now open the Windows RegEdit utility and navigate to theHKEYLOCALMACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsHelp key.
Listing 7Here ' A Description' is a brief description of thehelp file. This description will appear in some help system dialogs whensearching for entries, so keep the description brief.Using A-link keyword filesWhen using Delphi 6 and 7 there is still one more step to take to fullyintegrate our help file with the Delphi IDE. We must provide a list of allthe A-link keywords used in the help file.To begin with you need to create a text file containing a list of all theA-link keywords. This file must contain one keyword per line in lower case.The keywords must be sorted.
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Some help authoring tools should be able toassist with the creation of this list.Next we must make the list known to Delphi. Some documentation states thatthe keyword file, with extension.als, should be placed in theDelphi help directory. I have found this approach to be unreliable. The bestway to proceed is to merge the keywords from your file into the masterDelphi.als file, preserving the sort order. In Delphi 6 themaster file is named Delphi6.als and in Delphi 7 it is namedd7.als. In both cases the file is located in the Delphi helpdirectory.Note that, from release 2.2, the can automatically merge.als files when installing helpfiles.This completes the discussion of how to install help files into the DelphiIDE.UninstallingUninstallation is almost a reversal of the installation process discussedabove. I.e.:.Delete the:Index statement you added to Delphi's Indexfile.Delete the:Link statement from the Link file.Delete any:Include statement(s) referring to your helpproject's.cnt and.toc files from the mastercontents file.
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Listing 9When working with Delphi 6 and 7 it is probably best not to delete anya-keywords from the master.als file since the keywords mayalso be used by other help files.ConclusionIn this article we have looked at how to manually register third-party helpfiles with Delphi so that the help files are integrated with the DelphiIDE's help system. We also covered how to register help files with Windows.What, no demo code?No demonstration code accompanies this article, but if you want to know howto automate the techniques we use here, please see the.FeedbackI hope you found this article useful. If you have any comments or queries,or if you wish to report any errors, please.