As the Help installer executes, it prompts you to install what in the MS help viewer, dexplore.exe, calls "collections". By default, all collections are installed. However, some users don’t need or want some collections, particularly the MS SDK Help. So during the installation, you can choose to not install the MS SDK Help. This also saves a ton of disk space!

I highly recommend this configuration for those who use the MS SDK sparingly or not at all; the MS SDK Help is available on the internet if you need it. If you do need it, it’s there by default, as are other 3rd party help collections.

A note about 3rd party help collections - we take them as-is, and we are not authorized to open them up and change them. So if there are parts of a collection you want and parts you don’t, you’ll have to take it all; we can’t install at any level of granularity below that of the collection.

For future releases we are considering whether to switch the default around, to not install the MS SDK Help; if you have an opinion one way or another I appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks, -Dee

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Posted by Dee Elling on December 7th, 2009 under Documentation, Help, RAD Studio | 28 Comments »

Wiki Wiki Help2 Wiki

Building a documentation wiki for RAD Studio has been a major goal and ongoing task here for more than 2 years. I’m extremely happy to say we have launched Version 1 of the RAD docwiki at http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio. In addition to the over 60,000 topics in English, the wiki hosts translations for Japanese, French, and German.

The RAD docwiki is really 9 Mediawikis; 4 for general Topics, 4 for VCL/RTL, and 1 for Code Examples. It’s our "RAD Wiki Farm" and we are tending to it by fixing issues, making it more user-friendly, and coming up with new feature ideas every day.

The coolest thing about the wiki is that we use it as the content management system for the RAD Help. In other words, we generate the Microsoft Help2 system directly from the wiki content. We will update topics on the wiki every day, and periodically generate Help Updates for you to download to your system.  We are currently planning two Help Updates, one in September and one in November.

One immediate benefit is that it is much easier to edit and update content on the wiki than with our previous system. Our writers can be much more efficient, and the turn-around between what they write and what you can read is now seconds instead of months.  (Today this is true for English Topics only; soon it will be true for English VCL/RTL and examples.)

As a registered user you can edit the Discussion tab for the English versions (we are keeping the translations read-only for now). If you would like to edit pages directly, instead of the Discussion tab, just send an email to documentation@embarcadero.com and we’ll take care of your request.

There are issues, naturally, and we are regularly tracking your Forum and Discussion comments.  You can see the major issues we are tending at http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/en/Known_Problems_in_the_Help .

I hope you will find the wiki very useful, and that it grows into a complete resource for your programming needs. As much content as is there, we realize there is still a lot you need, and topics that are very thin or even still missing.  You will be able to see our progress and even contribute to it, if you like!

Cheers, -Dee

Note: the wiki login is not the same as your EDN login. They are different systems, and we plan to integrate with an Embarcadero single sign-on system in the future.

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Posted by Dee Elling on September 10th, 2009 under C++Builder, Delphi, Documentation, Help, RAD Studio, ednfront | 15 Comments »

Getting Started with Delphi and C++Builder 2009

As someone who hires people to document RAD Studio, one of my challenges has been to find training materials for the brand new user.  There are excellent sources for experienced users, but the fresh graduate who may have learned C or Java in school did not find a lot of help for learning the latest RAD Studio.

To remedy this, my team put together a new Getting Started guide that describes the UI and a few language basics. Led by Alex Ciobanu, tech writer Lucian Bentea and editor Denisa Ilascu authored the book with the able assistance of Andrei Susnea (on C++Builder) and Alex (on Delphi). Reviewers Kris Houser, Gary Staas, and Tim del Chario gave good feedback. Raluca Dudau was our first "new user test driver" and proved the point that a good training experience sets the basis for future success.

This book will be followed by a series of language guides the team is currently writing, in between their work on new features and perennial updates to the VCL/RTL.

Order your printed copies of Getting Started with Delphi and C++Builder from Lulu.com or download the PDF for free at docs.embarcadero.com.

Get a new developer started now!

-Dee

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Posted by Dee Elling on April 27th, 2009 under C++Builder, Delphi, ednfront | 8 Comments »

RAD Studio 2009 Help Update 2 CHM/PDF/HTML files posted

Hi,

The English Help Update 2 released in March, and now the update is available in PDF, CHM, and HTML formats at http://docs.embarcadero.com/products/rad_studio/.

By request, you can access the HTML pages and bookmark them in your browser. For example, here’s the Delphi Language Guide online!

The Delphi and C++ examples packages are also posted, along with handy lists of what is in the zips.

This is the most comprehensive help we’ve ever released; see Kris’ release notes. Next up, more bugfixes and the translations into French, German, and Japanese.

Enjoy! -Dee

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Posted by Dee Elling on April 13th, 2009 under Documentation, Help, RAD Studio | 8 Comments »

RS2009 Help Update 1 released

Our year-end push has been the first Help update for RS2009, and it is now available. See Kris’s notes at http://dn.codegear.com/article/39139. Next we’ll add the CHMs, PDFs, and HTMLs to docs.codegear.com; look for those in the New Year! Happy Holidays, -Dee

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Posted by Dee Elling on December 19th, 2008 under Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

docs.codegear.com beta

For those who want one-stop access to CodeGear product docs in PDF, HTML, and/or CHM formats, use http://docs.codegear.com. Not all docs are in all formats; let me know if there is something special you need. Also note that the Search is not yet robust, that’s why it’s still beta. There are many many thousands of files and Google hasn’t gotten to all of them yet… Enjoy!

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Posted by Dee Elling on July 18th, 2008 under Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

Continuous Improvement

The first ever set of updates to the RAD Studio "Highlander" Help have gone out to customers over the previous many months, and the last one is on its way. We’ve learned how to keep improving the existing release while ramping up on the next one. It’s been a challenge to keep track of the details around bugfixes, examples, source control, translations, help builds, and installers, and the team has been persistent and undeterred in providing "Continuous Improvement."

We’ve had the privilege of working with Delphi luminary Neil Moffatt, of Delphi Basics fame. Neil tackled many of our VCL outages during a break from his dream job as a photographer. We thank him very much and wish him all the best with weddings galore this summer! Call on Neil if you need some great photos of your events! And of course please continue to support his website as we all know how valuable it is for RAD Studio users.

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Posted by Dee Elling on May 30th, 2008 under Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Help on Help

The MS Help2 viewer is packed with features that are not always obvious. Kris Houser has posted an article about how to best use the RAD Studio Help. My favorite tip is how to use the Tools/Options/Help/Online dialog box to specify whether Search will include external sources or only RAD Studio help. By default the search traverses a variety of sources that are not of interest to me, so I restrict my searches to the "Local Help" that CodeGear provides. Thanks Kris!

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Posted by Dee Elling on February 7th, 2008 under Uncategorized | 23 Comments »

Docs on the Web

I’m a big believer in putting technical docs "live" on the web, especially for products that are web-oriented and/or whose customers are intense internet users. The tech docs at my alma mater WebLogic were a strategic advantage in the Java community; developers went to that website for the best J2EE docs no matter what software they owned. If you googled a J2EE term it was usually WebLogic doc at the top of the results. Great for company "mindshare" and great for customers too!

I’m making a big push to put CodeGear’s docs live on the internet this year. We’re doing a formal requirements doc and informal requirements gathering.

So… informally… what features would you like? Here are a few on my list so far:

* viewable, browsable, searchable HTML and PDF

* user comments

* integration with the IDE Help systems

* user contributed content

What tech doc sites do you like, and why?

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Posted by Dee Elling on January 11th, 2008 under Uncategorized | 26 Comments »

RAD Studio Help Update and CHMs

It’s January and time to catch up on the latest activities of the RAD Studio docs team. Last November we released the first ever Help Update and that went very well. Special thanks to  our Field Testers! For those who prefer the HTML Help format, we released CHM versions on CodeCentral. In between the holidays we continued improving the help and plan to release another Update soon. We’re also ramping up on the next big release of RAD Studio, so there are interesting things to learn, plan, and write about Unicode and other features.

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Posted by Dee Elling on January 11th, 2008 under Uncategorized | 9 Comments »