[Lazarus] Help on FCL?

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 26 January 2012 15:37, Marco van de Voort  wrote:
>> I think what he meant was, having the ability of reusing the Kylix
>> help files, while Lazarus seriously lacks good / any documentation for
>> the LCL.
>
> Maybe. But this should not be recommended. It is escapism (and of legal
> uncertainty).

I certainly agree that it is escapism. But back in the day (3 to 5+
years back) LCL had zero documentation, FPC CHM files did not exist,
and neither did DocView or the FPC INF help files. Then, using the
Kylix 3 help files was immensely useful.

Oh, and I am a legal and registered owner of Kylix 3 Open Edition,
Kylix 3 Professional and Kylix 3 Enterprise. So what I do with Kylix
in my personal capacity is my right.

As for me giving out my Kylix 3 Open Edition license key... I emailed
Borland and Embarcadero regarding the registration problem with Kylix
3 OE, and made my intent clear. There official answer was they have no
way of registering new Kylix 3 OE users, even though Kylix 3 OE is
freely available for download from various location on the internet,
and even though there are Kylix 3 OE based projects on SourceForge
(thus now stuck because no new Kylix users can register and use
Kylix). I did publish their reply to some Kylix newsgroups - Google
should be able to find that. I welcome Borland or Embarcadero to send
me a letter regarding my K3 OE license key. I'll give them another
mouth full about how bad this "must register your product online to
use it - even though the product is free for all" idea is.


> And certainly it is crazy to start developing to support that heavily aging
> mess.

By no means did I imply that Lazarus must now support HyperHelp file formats.


>> At least the Kylix 3 help is easily obtained in a legal manner.
>
> How so? Is it licensed for use without Kylix at all then?

See above. Anybody is allowed to download and use Kylix 3 Open Edition
- it was released for the open source community. When you download
that, you get a copy of the K3 help too.


> Moreover, IMHO 3rd party devels doing this is their business, but IMHO
> FPC/Lazarus shouldn't be recommending this kind of stuff

I'm not a FPC or Lazarus core developer. ;-)


>> seeing that Lazarus's goal is to be a clone of Delphi VCL, this could work
>> in a pinch.
>
> IMHO it is a step backwards.

Maybe that is true now, now that we have INF help files, CHM help
files, and that work is actually being done to document LCL. But 5+
years ago, Kylix 3's HyperHelp was the only way to get context
sensitive help in Lazarus IDE.


> the Lazarus/FPC projects should not be advocating this. Specially not when
> they formally have cleanroom policies in place.

Just to make it clear, I am also not implying that the Kylix 3 Help
content must be copied into the Lazarus LCL help.


>> know, Lazarus doesn't support WinHelp format, but maybe a similar
>> trick can be applied as was done for HyperHelp.
>
> Winhelp is RTF based.

See above. I did not imply copying Kylix's help text.


-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -


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