I ignored the help issues for now and opened my trusty Delphi 3 on my laptop for reference. Cranked out my first program in a couple hours. It was 20 megs until I turned optimization on and debugging off, then it went down to a little over 4. The C command line version is about 8 K, but oh well.

Installing and running as root seems to present a strange problem in that when I rebuild the IDE it doesn't write the new version to /root/.lazarus/lazarus, it stays in /usr/local/bin. I'll figure it out. So that's why adding packages and rebuilding seemed to not work, because I had lazarus-ide in my rxvt menu but the new versions were ending up as /usr/local/bin/lazarus and I wasn't using them. Rebuilding the real thing while I was running it crashed big time.

New questions: Can I use my Deplhi 3 help files? These are old-style .hlp files, not .chm. How can I change my help browser from Opera? Firefox thinks it's default but Opera keeps getting called somehow. The problem with it is that since it's not open source I'm actually running a Linux binary under Linux emulation, which is slow.

I saw the illegal character error only once, doing a clean and build got around it.

Now to try compiling this into an apk file...

Dear Graeme:

I have the same problems to install the Delphi5.hlp an consults when require. Please, let me know how to do exactly. I am using the Window8.1.

Thanks
Ing. H?ctor F. Fiandor Rosario

New questions: Can I use my Deplhi 3 help files? These are old-style .hlp files, not .chm.

I'm sure you can, but then you need to have a Linux or FreeBSD .hlp help viewer. WINE includes such a viewer, but not everybody wants to install WINE. Also take a look at DocView and INF help. It will take you 2 minutes to set up, and it doesn't matter which version of Lazarus you use. Also no rebuilding of Lazarus is required. DocView is set up using the External Tools functionality of Lazarus IDE.

"Alan Corey" wrote

Installing and running as root seems to present a strange problem in that when I rebuild the IDE it doesn't write the new version to /root/.lazarus/lazarus, it stays in /usr/local/bin. I'll figure it out.

You should not run Lazarus as root. Of course it will then place new binaries in /usr/local/bin, because it *can*. As a normal user it can't and thus it's falling back to ~/.lazarus.

Regards,
Sven
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Dear Mr. Graeme:
Really, this is my problem. I have the Delphi5?discs, but I lost the opportunity of the D?help when I moved to W8.1.

I don?t?know how to do it. If you can, let me know where to learn.

Tanks very much

Regards
Ing. H?ctor F. Fiandor Rosario

Alan Corey wrote

It was 20 megs until I turned optimization on and debugging off, then it went down to a little over 4.

LCL pulls in a lot of baggage. With other toolkits, and based on your application, that can be reduced to a third of that size, yet still have all the same functionality. ;-)

that when I rebuild the IDE it doesn't write the new version to /root/.lazarus/lazarus, it stays in /usr/local/bin. I'll figure it

As Sven said, never run Lazarus (or anything really) as root. I've suggested this many times before... Install FPC from the official FPC installed available on SourceForge. Install it to your home directory (eg: /home/alan/devel/fpc-3.0.0/). Then use Git or SVN to get the Lazarus source code (eg: /home/alan/devel/lazarus/). The do a 'make bigide' and you are done!

No issues with write access or other permissions, no scattered files all over your system etc. This method has worked for me for years under Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

New questions: Can I use my Deplhi 3 help files? These are old-style .hlp files, not .chm.

I'm sure you can, but then you need to have a Linux or FreeBSD .hlp help viewer. WINE includes such a viewer, but not everybody wants to install WINE. Also take a look at DocView and INF help. It will take you 2 minutes to set up, and it doesn't matter which version of Lazarus you use. Also no rebuilding of Lazarus is required. DocView is set up using the External Tools functionality of Lazarus IDE.

On a side note:
Regarding your screenshots of a conversion tool. Take a look at Unimesur, created by Jean-Marc - a fpGUI contributor. It has conversions for anything you can think of, is translated to French and English, includes built-in help and can even print results or conversion tables to PDF. All in a 800KB download.

http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/community.shtml

Regards,
- Graeme -

hfiandor wrote

I am using the Window8.1.

For a start, have you actually downloaded and installed the HLP help viewer? As far as I know the HLP viewer does not ship with Win7 and later any more. It is now an extra download from Microsoft.

Regards,
- Graeme -

hfiandor wrote

Really, this is my problem. I have the Delphi5?discs, but I lost the opportunity of the D?help when I moved to W8.1.

Download the WinHelp32.exe binary from here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=91

If the WinHlp32.exe doesn't run on Win8.1 then take the issue up with Microsoft.

If it does run, then find out what command line parameters it supports. Google is your friend. Set up a Lazarus "external tools" item via the "Tools -> Configure external tools" dialog.

For details on how it was done using DocView and INF help, take a look here: http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/docview_ide_integration.shtml

Regards,
- Graeme -