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When I worked with Delphi 5 I always pressed F1 on a method I did not knew how to use. The Help system explained what it is, what is does and gave an example on how to use it in a simple code. After that I installed Delphi 2006 and bammm! No more code examples.Anyone knows why give up on something so important?

Charles
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NaN
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  • I have jumped from Delphi 6 to Delphi XE2 and it comes with many examples. I am using XE5 now and still have examples with more added and covered on help file, some with great details, and videos in youtube. So, I am not sure about such ancient version. – Eduardo Elias Jun 09 '14 at 01:17
  • I've used virtually every version of Delphi ever released, and overall I've found most of the code examples to be relatively useless, moreso after the transition away from WinHelp. They typically show how to call a function, not use it; they're syntactic examples only. There's always the exception, but I've given up on using their help system for code examples long ago. Google usually turns up far more useful things on about.com and other sites. – David Schwartz Jun 09 '14 at 04:38

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(Personal opinion based on observation and analysis of a long time Delphi user, as I am not from Delphi team. If you do have any evidence to support or challenge, please leave a comment.)

Delphi 5/6/7 help system was built upon a Microsoft Help system called WinHelp.

Due to Microsoft's decision to make WinHelp obsolete, all previous help materials become "impossible" to migrate (need more info from Embarcadero to support this statement). The new help system in Delphi 8-XE 3 was a completely new system. Porting contents and formats from the ancient platform to the new one becomes a huge burden and a very time consuming process, which takes many years to accomplish.

Delphi 2006 was an "intermediate" release, where its help system is half baked. You have to use a later release (such as the latest) to get F1 working as you wished. Or alternatively, use the online version, such as

http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/en/Delphi_Reference

Lex Li
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  • The help content was not re-written. You can see this by the fact that most of it is the same as it ever was. – David Heffernan Jun 09 '14 at 06:02
  • Thanks for the comment. Revised the terms a little bit. – Lex Li Jun 09 '14 at 06:52
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    I still don't think you've any real evidence for any of this. The content is still there. – David Heffernan Jun 09 '14 at 07:11
  • Code examples are now provided online with even an index http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/CodeExamples/XE6/en/Category:Delphi – stanleyxu2005 Jun 09 '14 at 07:29
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    Fact is that after Delphi 8, large parts of the help had to be rewritten (somehow most of the old content got lost in the conversion), and that took quite some time and quite a few version numbers. – Rudy Velthuis Jun 09 '14 at 08:35
  • @RudyVelthuis You state a fact but don't provide evidence. No doubt you have it somewhere. Although it seems astounding that help content could just be lost. – David Heffernan Jun 09 '14 at 16:59
  • @LexLi I still don't buy your update. *All previous help materials become "impossible" to migrate*. My company's help files were migrated from WinHelp/RTF to HtmlHelp/HTML. It took a degree of tooling up to do so. But impossible is a very strong word, and one that is manifestly misused here. – David Heffernan Jun 09 '14 at 17:01
  • I don't have evidence. I was told by the help writers. Not all was lost, but somehow, something went wrong somewhere. – Rudy Velthuis Jun 09 '14 at 17:02
  • @DavidHeffernan, thanks for sharing the evidence of your own company. But it does not convince me either. You might be able to migrate from WinHelp to HTML, but who knows what was the tool used by Delphi team? If that tool were able to give any possibility to migrate, we should have seen a good enough new help system since Delphi 8. – Lex Li Jun 10 '14 at 02:36
  • The word "impossible" is clearly too strong. More plausible is that Emba screwed up. – David Heffernan Jun 10 '14 at 06:03