TOPIC:

Hi,
I am on Windows 11 64 bit.
ctchmviewer does not work for me when I press F1 on a symbol.
The window does not show up and it looks as shown in the attachment.
It is almost impossibel to bring the window into foreground and in the preview it is empty.
Quite often it is also impossible to close it regulary and must be closed by taskmanager.
If ctchmviewer.exe is invoked directly, it works.
hh.exe shows up if I install it but does not show the item for which F1 was pressed.
I tried both current stable and current Lab version - same behaviour.

My Installation is  vanilla on drive C: and not modified and fresh.

 

Please give us time to fix this 

We test LAB CT 8.10, TyphonIDE 32/64
and we can't produce the problem.

ctchmviewer use about 120 MBytes of RAM

Screen from Win 11 Ent

 



 

Thank you!
I can see this every time, it happens always with both 32 bit and 64 bit Typhon.
Because I had not used CT for a longer time I initially believed this is the reason and I deleted it completely, made a fresh install and after the problem persisted I installed the Lab version.
But the problem persisted.
I have also Lazarus trunk installed and it works.
I have a german version of Windows. Could this be the reason?
I observe, when I start CT it comes up with only partial translated menu. (This does not hurt me, because I always use English language usually, but I have observed this)
When I change the language setting to English the problem with ctchmviewer persists.
I have also Delphi community installed. Could there be a conflict with environment variables?
Edit:
I have now discovered C:\Users\peter\AppData\Roaming\typhon64 and deleted it, but the problem persists.
I did not know about these files before. Should these have any effect? When I do a fresh install my settings are not preserved.



Edit2:
I have now copied Lazarus lhelp.exe and renamed it to ctchmviewer.exe and this works.
So I think ctchmviewer.exe has a problem.
I could also use Windows hh.exe and I put "%s::%s" with the double quotes into the help options. But this doesnt work. The help window comes up, but does not show help for the selected item.
Edit3:
I recompiled ctchmviewer, and nothing changed.
Also started Typhon with administrator privilege, no success.
BTW, I use currently AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G with Radeon Graphics, 4000 MHz, 8 Kern(e), 16 logische(r) Prozessor(en)
 and 32 GB of RAM (which is only 50% used)
I think it is a compatibility problem maybe it has to do with interprocess communication (which I unfortunately have no clue of)

Give us time to find  a solution.
We will recreate and all CHM files

We want your help
-Go to C:\codetyphon\help\chm\ folder and
delete all bs_* files
leave only bs_utils.chm andbs_utils.xct files

 


Test again the ctchmviewer.exe from TyphonIDE (F1/ESC)
and report here. 

I did as instructed.
(I made a subdirectory "bak" and moved the files to this location, I hope this is ok.)
The behavior did not change.
I did even reboot, but still the same behavior. 


 

Thanks
I will try something else...

Open ctchmviewer.ctpr with TyphonIDE
Go to ctChmViewerMW.pas (the main form)
and add

Build and test.
 

Ok, I will do so.
In the meantime I did an experiment: I copied ctchmviewer.exe over to lazarus (trunk version) and renamed it to lhelp.exe and it works!
On the other side lazarus lhelp.exe works with typhon when it is renamed to ctchmviewer.exe.

I did cleanup and compile. (With your $Define included)
Now an empty helpviewer (without content) appears. Still the window doesnt come up into foreground but I can view it when I click the symbol in the taskbar.

I have two monitors.
However the second monitor was inactive. (It was not switched off by powerswitch, but inactivated by Windows software (pressing Windows Key+P). Then the monitor is switched off by software and the desktop size is reduced to the first monitor.)
Another hint: This monitor, which was switched off, is the first monitor in Windows. So I normally use the second monitor as my first monitor Monitor 1 and Monitor 2 are swapped in the Windows settings. Monitor 2 uses HDMI and the other uses DVI. Because I believed HDMI is better, I swapped the monitors in Windows. This arrangement is grown by accident, but until now it worked for me, and so I did not think about this. I activate the other monitor only, when I need it.
Now I activated the second monitor and the help appears on the second monitor.
So this works now.
Obviously it tried to open the help in a desktop region that at this time did not exist and this caused the strange effects.
The question remains: why is the help opened outside of the active desktop and can this be prevented?
I have an absolute fresh install and never used the second monitor and expanded desktop with this particular CT installation before. So it cannot have stored the window position somewhere.
Now, after it worked, I moved the help window to my normal monitor and closed it. It remembered this position and now it works normally on my main monitor with only this monitor activated.

Thanks

We test :
-4xPC with Win10 and Win11
-4xPC with Linux, FreeBSD and DagonFly
-1xPC with OpenIndiana
-2xPC with MacOS

With NO problem

PS: For test rename the Lazarus folder with *.CHM help files
We don't use Lazarus in our LAB

The problem was clearly the monitor. As soon as I activated the second monitor the problem was gone and the help window was visible on the second monitor.
I think you have no such arrangement in the Lab where the monitors are swapped and monitor 2 is used as main monitor and monitor 1 is usually disabled.
However, this setup did not cause problems for 2 years now, and because I use the second monitor only for photo work, I did not think about it.
Anyway, thank you very much and I am sorry if this has caused avoidable work for you.

I think, if the installation of ct is pristine, the help is always displayed on Monitor 1, even if it does not exist (because it is disabled) and this is the problem.

The problem is fully reproducible if you know how to provoke it.

Exactly same problem happens with Lazarus, it is probably an inherited problem and has nothing to do with windows 11.
Open Help by pressing F1 on a symbol, then put the help window to another monitor. (In Windows this is another Monitor, but logically it is the same Desktop) Then close Codetyphon or Lazarus and the help window.
Then press Windows Key + P and disable that monitor. This means the desktop is shrinked and the previous position of the help window is invalid now.
Then open the IDE again and invoke help in the same way as before and the problem appears.
A help icon is visible in the Taskbar, but the related window has no content and obviously hangs and cant go to foreground.

It is not a major problem if you know about it. However, if it happens by accident, as it happened to me, then it causes major headaches.
It can happen to any user who changes the monitor configuration from time to time.