After installing VX over a backup copy of Xbase++ Version 1.82.294, several 
new folder were created, including a "C:\Alaska\XPPW32\Help\" folder, that 
contains three "*.chm" HTML-Help files.

Selecting any of those from the "Help" option of the VX main menu works 
fine, and the "Help Path" under Environment Options is also set to: 
"C:\ALASKA\XPPW32\Help\". But if I press any [Help] buttons, like the one on 
the "Environment Options" dialog, I get an error message box with a title 
of: "HTML Help Author Message". The error message reads:
"HH_HELP_CONTEXT called without a [MAP] section". This is followed by a 
second error message box with a title of: "Installation Error". The error 
message reads: "HTML Help not installed or damaged".

This also happens if you press "SHIFT"+"F1" anywhere in the editor.

In addition to the above problems, there are a couple more Help-related 
things that should be changed:

1) The position and size of all three HTML Help files is hard-coded (and too 
   high, but not wide enough for a 1024/768 pixel desktop with a standard 
   taskbar on the bottom). 
   This should be changed, so that always the last position and size is 
   used. This unnecessary hard-coding of the size and position of help files 
   makes it VERY user-unfriendly. This was/is also a problem with the 
   XbTools and several other Alaksa help files!

2) Pressing "F1" in the editor will usually show the corresponding help 
   entry in the "Xbase++ Language" help file ("xpplang20.chm"), but only
   if there is an entry in the Index of that help file. But there are many 
   entries missing or not recognized, such as: ".T.", ".F.", ".AND.", 
   ".OR.", ".NOT.", "ELSE", "ELSEIF", "ENDIF", "END", "WHILE", "BEGIN", 
   "SEQUENCE", "ENDSEQUENCE", etc.

2a) Trying to find any info on "Procedure", yielded two options "Procedure" 
    and "PROCEDURE", where selecting "Procedure" shows the help page for 
    "INIT PROCEDURE", but a little bit below the actual header.

2b) Trying to find "Method", I ended up at the function "IsMethod()", as the 
    actual entries for "Method" are split between "METHOD (Declaration)" and 
    "METHOD (Implementation)", and no selection option is offered.

To make this help system work better, much more care has to be put into 
designing the Help Index file and naming the entries. In addition, the 
Editor Context-Help function must be able to handle extra characters like 
leading and trailing ".", or the help-index has to compensate for things 
like that!

In addition, the documentation for the "F1" key states: "When the term 
cannot be found, a default help page is shown." But this is not quite 
correct. If the HTML Help is already open, it will be brought to the front, 
but the currently selected page is shown, and not the default page!

-- Andreas

---                                                                      ---
  Andreas Gehrs-Pahl             E-Mail: GPahl@CharterMI.net
  415 Gute Street                    or: Andreas@DDPSoftware.com
  Owosso, MI 48867-4410              or: Andreas@Aerospace-History.net
  Tel: (989) 723-9927          Web Site: http://www.Aerospace-History.net
---                                                                      ---

Hi ARD guys,

Even though I think that VX-Beta would definitely be more accurate than 
Pre-Release, especially when the final VX 2.0/Xbase++ 1.9 version is not 
expected before March -- according to Steffen -- I have to admit that the 
response by you guys on these new NGs is great!

With a small exception. The post I am responding to, as well as the one 
about my News-Server access problems, has been completely ignored up to now. 
The Help file issues are a big annoyance for me. And it would be so easy to 
at least disable the hard coding of the position and size of the help files.

With respect to the News-Server problems, it might help (me), if you could 
add "News Group Descriptions" to at least one of the NGs, as the news group 
retrieval seems to be the place where my other news reader hangs.

Ansonsten bin Ich relativ optimistisch. Ynd ein Schoenes Neues Jahr,
allerseits.

-- Andreas

---                                                                      ---
  Andreas Gehrs-Pahl              E-Mail: GPahl@CharterMI.net
  415 Gute Street                     or: Andreas@DDPSoftware.com
  Owosso, MI 48867-4410               or: Andreas@Aerospace-History.net
  Tel: (989) 723-9927           Web Site: http://www.Aerospace-History.net
---                                                                      ---

"Andreas Gehrs-Pahl" <Andreas@DDPSoftware.com> wrote in message
news:37klnt05prkv.pwgoywpgx57f.dlg@40tude.net...

> Hi ARD guys,
>
> Even though I think that VX-Beta would definitely be more accurate than
> Pre-Release, especially when the final VX 2.0/Xbase++ 1.9 version is not
> expected before March -- according to Steffen -- I have to admit that the
> response by you guys on these new NGs is great!

Thank you  !!

> With a small exception. The post I am responding to, as well as the one
> about my News-Server access problems, has been completely ignored up to
> now. The Help file issues are a big annoyance for me. And it would be so
> easy to at least disable the hard coding of the position and size of the
help
> files.

I'm sorry you were neglected. Please believe me, it wasn't intentional. It's
probably because each of us kept thinking the other would step in and in the
end, nobody did.

Regarding the errors you reported for the online help, I've had no problems
reproducing them on this machine. I remember checking when I first saw
your post and back then, I couldn't. I'll check again when I'm back in the
office. This is, of course, unaccecptable.

I've added the issue of the hard-coded help window dimensions to the list
of things to be looked at for the next release. Not nice, I agree. The help
index and related problems will take longer to correct, of course. I'll see
what I can do, okay?

> With respect to the News-Server problems, it might help (me), if you
> could add "News Group Descriptions" to at least one of the NGs, as
> the news group retrieval seems to be the place where my other news
> reader hangs.

I'll check when I'm back in the office. Unfortunately, I know neither of
the newsreaders you are using. Seems like it might be time for me to
get up to speed on these things .

> Ansonsten bin Ich relativ optimistisch. Ynd ein Schoenes Neues Jahr,
> allerseits.

Danke Dir! Das gleiche fr Dich und die Deinen  !!

  Till
  [Alaska Research & Development]