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 | 12 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 »

Examples on CodeCentral

Our Delphi examples writer Rick Dickason has started posting the packages for the examples that are in the RAD Studio Help.  Actually, with the first two he is a bit ahead of the Help… they will be included in Help Update 1, soon!

The way it works was originally envisioned by Chris Benson and Chris White did the tooling. Here’s what happens:

Rick develops packages that exercise particular classes and methods.  He puts metadata in the comments to indicate what is used. Chris’ "examples injector" runs over the packages, interprets the metadata, and inserts the examples into the correct XML source for the API reference.

The beauty of this is that the code has a higher level of quality, since it must compile. Plus, it is dynamic and automated. Also, the packages can be supplied on CodeCentral. Yet another benefit is that we can create automated tests that run the packages against future versions of RAD Studio, to validate both the example and the product.

Let us know what you think… Rick has a lot more on the way!

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Posted by Dee Elling on September 28th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Releases Galore and Delphi Examples

We’ve had a flurry of releases the last few weeks! JGears, RAD Studio 2007 with Blackfish SQL, and the new kid on the block 3rdRail with veteran InterBase. Coming up for air, I’m starting to take in the feedback and work on the upcoming round of updates.

I’m hearing good things about the code examples returning to the Delphi help and am happy to thank Chris Benson, Chris White, Rick Dickason, Chris Pattinson, and Spencer Kimball for making it happen. Benson has blogged about the examples project and the first round of results are in the release. Stay tuned for more Delphi and new C++ examples, and Rick is gearing up to post the existing projects to CodeCentral.

With the Eclipse Update framework and equally with the new RAD Studio Help Installer/Updater, the team will be able to release versions of Help independent of releases. Soon… after the team has a little breather!

And I haven’t forgotten about the CHM files, which were so helpful to so many customers. Soon…

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Posted by Dee Elling on September 18th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 5 Comments »