Help on Help - CHM

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The RAD Studio CHM help is the help that is delivered with RAD Studio and responds to the Help button or F1 key from the IDE. The help is in Microsoft Compiled HTML Help format, also known as CHM.

There are two panes in the Windows HTML Help viewer:

  • The left-hand side pane gives you access to the navigation features: Contents, Index, Search, Favorites.
  • The right-hand side pane shows the current help topic.

Context-Sensitive F1 Help in the IDE

Context-sensitive help is available by pointing (selecting) an item in the IDE and pressing F1:

  • In the Code Editor, you can:
    • Point an identifier corresponding to a name of a procedure, function, constant, property, variable, field, type, program, unit, library, or package described in installed CHM help files.
    • Point a word (or token) corresponding to a reserved word, directive, or C++ keyword.
    • Select a qualified identifier identifier1.identifier2. Here identifier1 qualifies identifier2. For example, you can select TCollection.Clear.
    • Point anywhere in the Code Editor.
  • On a form in the Form Designer, select the component.
  • In the Messages window, select a message.
  • Within IDE windows, such as the Projects Window or Model View, click within the window.

Docwiki Has the Most Up-to-Date Content

We generate the RAD Studio help from a wiki: docwiki. You will always find the most recent and up-to-date help by visiting the docwiki. All RAD Studio users are invited to participate in the docwiki. You can create your own user account by clicking Log in \ Create account on any page in the docwiki.

There are actually three separate wikis:

In the offline CHM help, the footer of each page shows a link, Current Wiki Page: Click this link to access the current docwiki version of the displayed page.

Updating the Offline CHM Help

Occasionally* we provide a newer version of the offline CHM help as a separate download. In order to apply the newer version, follow the steps below:

  1. Close RAD Studio.
  2. Download the zip that contains the CHM files.
  3. Extract the zip.
  4. Navigate to the location of the CHM files (default is C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\Help\Doc\).
  5. Overwrite the existing CHM files with the ones from the zip (you may want to make a backup of the old CHM files before).
  6. Open RAD Studio.
  7. Launch help.

*You can see the date the CHM files were updated here or in the readme file that is included in the zip.

See Also

Retrieved from "https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Sydney/e/index.php?title=Help_on_Help_-_CHM&oldid=268585"