HelpScribble Version History
Software Quality at Just Great Software
Don't let the long lists of issues on this page make you think our products have a lot of problems. Quite to the contrary. All the bugs listed below are bugs that we have fixed. Many of these are corner cases reported by only one or perhaps a handful of our customers. Other software companies often don't spend any effort addressing such issues, much less list them publicly. We take pride in producing high quality software, and often release free updates to ensure you won't have any problems with our software.
If you ever hit a snag with HelpScribble, check here whether you have the latest version. If you do, simply report the issue via email and we'll help you out as soon as we can.
HelpScribble 8.3.2 – 17 November 2023
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi 12 Athens and C++Builder 12 Athens. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications. Supports IDE theming and high DPI.
Improvement:
- Updated documentation to explain that Windows 11 fully supports HTML Help and does not support WinHelp at all, just like Windows 10.
Bug fixes:
- Browse Sequence Editor: Arrow images on the buttons to move topics between the lists pointed in the opposite direction (since 8.0.0).
- Spell Check: Using one of the Learn or Learn Replace buttons during a spell check while never having used the other button since first downloading the spell check dictionary caused a “List index out of bounds (0)” error when switching from HelpScribble to another application or when closing HelpScribble (since 8.0.0).
See also: HelpScribble 8.3.2 release notes
HelpScribble 8.3.1 – 14 September 2021
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi 11 Alexandria and C++Builder 11 Alexandria. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications. Supports IDE theming and high DPI.
Improvement:
- Project|Options: Searching for help compilers no longer advances to the next drive to look for a 16-bit WinHelp compiler when a 32-bit WinHelp compiler and an HTML Help compiler have already been found unless the search was started with only the 16-bit WinHelp compiler missing.
Bug fixes:
- Project|Options: Searching for help compilers now shows its progress without flickering the label that shows the folder that the search has progressed to.
- Project|Options: Searching for help compilers no longer fails when it encounters a folder that contains more than 512 subfolders.
See also: HelpScribble 8.3.1 release notes
HelpScribble 8.3.0 – 28 May 2020
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi 10.4 Tokyo and C++Builder 10.4 Tokyo. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications.
Improvement:
- Compiling a project with many PNG and/or GIF images into HTML Help format is now faster.
Bug fix:
- Lines indented with a single space lost their indentation when compiled into HTML Help.
See also: HelpScribble 8.3.0 release notes
HelpScribble 8.2.2 – 31 March 2020
Bug fixes:
- Compiling into HTML Help format did not incorporate the changes made to topics that already existed since the project was first compiled into HTML Help format since it was last opened (8.2.1 only).
See also: HelpScribble 8.2.2 release notes
HelpScribble 8.2.1 – 11 February 2020
Bug fixes:
- Link button on the TopicBar said “No such topic” for every topic when the drop-down list was sorted by topic ID number.
- Project|Export to Web Help: Font substitution grid now scales correctly on high DPI systems.
- Project|Export to Web Help: Using styles for indentation did not always result in correct indentation when the exported HTML was viewed in modern web browsers.
- Setup: Running the installer with the /silent parameter from a command prompt without admin privileges now installs HelpScribble for the current user without an elevation prompt instead of doing nothing. Silent installs from an elevated command prompt install HelpScribble for all users. If HelpScribble was previously installed for all users or if the /userall parameter is passed on the command line, then silent installs from a command prompt without admin privileges now trigger an elevation prompt so the installer can proceed to install for all users.
See also: HelpScribble 8.2.1 release notes
HelpScribble 8.2.0 – 8 January 2019
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi 10.3 Tokyo and C++Builder 10.3 Tokyo. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications.
Improvements:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE2 and later now retrieves component icons from the IDE instead of supplying its own icons.
- Project|Make now shows a reminder that Windows 10 does not support WinHelp after creating a HLP file on Windows 10.
See also: HelpScribble 8.2.0 release notes
HelpScribble 8.1.2 – 10 May 2018
Improvements:
- Windows 10: Installer now deals with Controlled Folder Access more efficiently when Windows Defender is operational and ignores it when Windows Defender is not operational, ensuring a smoother installation on Windows 10 1709 (Fall Creators Update) and 1803 (April 2018 Update).
See also: HelpScribble 8.1.2 release notes
HelpScribble 8.1.1 – 7 February 2018
Improvements:
- Windows 10: Installer adds HelpScribble as an allowed application to Controlled Folder Access in Windows Defender in the Fall Creators Update.
- Windows 10: Installer no longer complains that it can't create the desktop shortcut if that was blocked by Controlled Folder Access.
Bug fix:
- Proxy server settings were not saved (8.1.0 only).
See also: HelpScribble 8.1.1 release notes
HelpScribble 8.1.0 – 31 March 2017
New features:
- Help|News & Updates: New version announcements and other news about HelpScribble and optionally other Just Great Software products can now be shown automatically or upon request.
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi 10.2 Tokyo and C++Builder 10.2 Tokyo. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications.
- Setup: Per-user installations that don't require admin rights and that can create shortcuts and file associations.
Improvement:
- Setup: HelpContext property editor is now automatically registered into the Delphi IDE even if you change its installation folder through Advanced Installation.
Bug fix:
- Build tag drop-down list contained as many empty items as you had topics without build tags in your project; it should not have any empty items and give you a list of unique build tags used in your project.
See also: HelpScribble 8.1.0 release notes
HelpScribble 8.0.0 – 14 December 2016
Improvements:
- 20th anniversary edition with updated artwork including modern toolbar buttons, about box, and trial messages.
- HelpScribble now scales itself instead of letting Windows handle the scaling when the font size in Windows has been increased by more than 125% (i.e. the display resolution is more than 120 DPI) resulting in a much crisper appearance of HelpScribble.
- Toolbar icons now support up to 400% display scaling at all increments available in the basic display settings in Windows, allowing HelpScribble to properly scale its toolbars on all PC and laptop displays on the market today.
- Project|Show Help File and Project|Make now indicate that WinHelp is not supported on Windows 10.
- Spell checker: Learned words are now saved much faster, removing the long delay when changing the spell check language or when switching to another application after learning a new word if thousands of words had already been learned.
See also: HelpScribble 8.0.0 release notes
HelpScribble 7.9.3 – 25 October 2016
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi 10.1 Berlin and C++Builder 10.1 Berlin. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications. (Was included with 7.9.2, but installer failed to detect Delphi 10.1 Berlin so the property editor could never be installed.)
HelpScribble 7.9.2 – 23 June 2016
Improvement:
- Updated documentation to explain that Windows 10 fully supports HTML Help and does not support WinHelp at all.
HelpScribble 7.9.1 – 16 November 2015
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi 10 Seattle and C++Builder 10 Seattle. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications.
Improvement:
- Installer no longer asks to accept the license agreement if you already have HelpScribble installed.
Bug fix:
- Project|Export to Web Help sometimes nested font, bold, italic, or anchor tags incorrectly; all browsers still displayed the pages correctly but HTML validators would complain.
HelpScribble 7.9.0 – 10 April 2015
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE8 and C++Builder XE8. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications.
Improvement:
- Project|Export to Web Help now adds a viewport meta tag to each exported HTML file which makes mobile devices render the pages at the appropriate size and makes Google consider the pages to be mobile-friendly.
Bug fix:
- Project|Export to Web Help sometimes nested font and anchor tags incorrectly; all browsers still displayed the pages correctly but HTML validators would complain.
HelpScribble 7.8.8 – 10 September 2014
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE7 and C++Builder XE7. Supports both VCL Forms applications and Multi-Device applications.
HelpScribble 7.8.7 – 23 April 2014
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE6 and C++Builder XE6. Supports both VCL and FireMonkey.
Bug fix:
- Web Help: Index entries all had broken links when exporting to Web Help with HelpScribble 7.8.6 (that version only).
HelpScribble 7.8.6 – 2 December 2013
Improvement:
- Windows 8.1: Updated documentation to reflect the help file situation on Windows 8.1: out-of-the box support for HTML Help; WinHelp is a separate download.
Bug fixes:
- Project|Export HPJ+RTF produced invalid RTF files if the project contained links to external CHM files in the form of {link=Scribble1234@htmlhelp.chm}.
- Web Help: Index link was not removed when exporting a project that has no keywords.
- Web Help: Using style attributes for indentation did not work with browsers other than Internet Explorer.
HelpScribble 7.8.5 – 2 October 2013
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE5 and C++Builder XE5. Supports both VCL and FireMonkey.
HelpScribble 7.8.4 – 28 May 2013
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE4 and C++Builder XE4. Supports both VCL and FireMonkey.
HelpScribble 7.8.3 – 6 December 2012
Improvements:
- Windows 8: Uninstall shortcut is no longer pinned to the start screen by the installer (but it won't unpin any shortcuts that were previously pinned).
- Windows 8: Updated documentation to reflect the help file situation on Windows 8: out-of-the box support for HTML Help; WinHelp is a separate download.
HelpScribble 7.8.2 – 7 September 2012
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE3 and C++Builder XE3. Supports both VCL and FireMonkey.
Bug fix:
- Contents Editor: Topics that were not in the table of contents were dimmed in the grid if their context string (e.g. Scribble123) was part of a context string of another topic (e.g. Scribble123456) that was in the table of contents.
HelpScribble 7.8.1 – 23 September 2011
New feature:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE2 and C++Builder XE2. Supports both VCL and FireMonkey.
Improvement:
- Contents Editor: Allow topics to be indented under another topic when compiling into HTML Help format. In the HTML Help file, topics that have topics under them will appear as headers that also show their topic when clicked on.
Bug fix:
- Web Help: Buttons were not correctly exported to web help, resulting in a page not found error if a button was clicked.
HelpScribble 7.8.0 – 2 September 2010
New features:
- HelpContext property editor for Delphi XE and C++Builder XE.
- HelpTools|Insert Button: Create buttons to targets.
- Project, Renumber: Option to shift all Topic IDs by a certain amount without using a gap.
Improvements:
- Compiling from the command line now ignores the option to automatically save the project when compiling because the project can't have changed. This means that read-only projects can now be compiled from the command line when the option to automatically save is on.
- Contents Editor: Double-clicking an entry activates the topic it points to in HelpScribble's main window.
Bug fix:
- Exporting to web help used = instead of : in some style attributes.
HelpScribble 7.7.7 – 3 September 2009
HelpScribble's HelpContext property editor now supports Delphi 2010 and C++Builder 2010.
HelpScribble 7.7.6 – 14 May 2009
Improvements:
- HTML Help: Broken links indicated at the bottom of the help compiler error log now mention the topic the broken link was found in.
- Import Help Project: If the HPJ file specifies an invalid path to the RTF file, HelpScribble now looks for the RTF file in the same folder as the HPJ file rather than complaining the path to the RTF file is invalid.
Bug fixes:
- HTML Help: Compiling a help file with a button that specifies a non-existent topic ID no longer aborts the compilation with a "no such topic" error. Instead, the broken button is indicated at the bottom of the help compiler's error log.
- HTML Help: If a topic has its context string set to "prn", "con" or "aux", HelpScribble will no longer fail to compile into HTML Help format with an error that the file could not be created.
- The Follow Link context menu item did not work with links that specify a window name, such as {linkID=1234>window}.
HelpScribble 7.7.5 – 13 September 2008
HelpScribble's HelpContext property editor now supports Delphi 2009 and C++Builder 2009.
HelpScribble 7.7.4 – 24 June 2008
Bug fixes:
- Command line: The /q command line parameter to make HelpScribble quit after compiling from the command line caused an access violation error when HelpScribble tried to close itself. The help file was still compiled correctly. (7.7.3 only)
- Downloading spell check dictionaries within HelpScribble failed with an error: "Error reading HTTP.MaxLineAction.Property. MaxLineAction does not exist". (7.7.3 only)
- Project, Renumber Topics failed with an access violation if a topic contained an incomplete {linkID} or {button} tag.
HelpScribble 7.7.3 – 6 May 2008
New features:
- Keyboard shortcuts for all items in the HelpTools menu.
- Project Options, HTML Help: Option to convert popup links into regular links.
Improvements:
- Indicate broken links below the help compiler's error log when compiling into HTML Help format or exporting to Web Help.
- Indicate missing bitmaps below the help compiler's error log when compiling into HTML Help format or exporting to Web Help.
Bug fixes:
- BMP and SHG images were converted as many times as they were referenced in the help file, instead of just once when compiling into HTML Help format or exporting to Web Help. The converted image was and is compiled only once into the final .chm file.
- Compiling a help file that uses a large number of BMP files into HTML Help format many times during a single HelpScribble session caused HelpScribble to crash due to a resource leak.
- HTML Help: If a topic doesn't have a context string, HelpScribble will automatically assign it one when you use Project|Make instead of triggering a help compiler error.
HelpScribble 7.7.2 – 3 August 2007
New feature:
- HTML Help: Configure help window size and position in Project Options.
Improvement:
- Windows Editor: The position wizard now works correctly on systems with multiple monitors. Note that WinHelp will always show the help file on the primary monitor.
Bug fixes:
- Compiling a help file from the command line did not work when specifying a relative path (or just the file name) to the .hsc file, and no output folder was specified in Project Options
- HTML Help: If the index had main keywords without topics but with subkeywords, and all the subkeywords had only one topic, the main keyword was not visible in the index in the compiled help file. (Keywords without topics appear in red in HelpScribble's keyword editor.)
- HTML Help: Tabs were not converted properly if the paragraph had hanging indent wider than the first tab position.
- Project Options: Serbian locale IDs were incorrect.
- Vista: The HelpContext Property Editor for Delphi wouldn't close, raising an error that it couldn't create hscrprop.ini
HelpScribble 7.7.1 – 23 February 2007
Improvements:
- HTML Help: HelpScribble now makes HTML Help put more space between left- and right-aligned images and the text that flows around them, similar to what WinHelp does.
- HTML Help: If an image could not be found during compilation, HelpScribble will now indicate this with a "missing image" indicator in the compiled help file rather than silently excluding the image.
- HelpTools|Insert Bitmap: The image file selection dialog now has file filters listing the file types supported by HTML Help and WinHelp.
- The setup program will now install the HelpContext property editor into Delphi 2007 for Win32.
Bug fix:
- Vista: Checkboxes and buttons in dialog boxes no longer disappear when you press the Alt key.
HelpScribble 7.7.0 – 8 January 2007
New features:
- HelpTools|Link now allows you to create links to other .chm files. These links will only work reliably when the file you're creating is a .chm file. If the target .chm is in a different folder, you must specify an absolute path to it.
- Text|Paste Plain Text: Paste the text on the clipboard with all its formatting removed.
Improvements:
- Contents Editor: Automatically update the titles of topics in the table of contents when a topic's actual title is changed.
- Project|Import HPJ+RTF: HelpScribble will now import the table of contents from a .cnt file with the same file name as the .hpj file when the CNT entry inside the .hpj file is invalid.
- Vista: Installing spell check dictionaries now works properly under Windows Vista with User Account Control enabled.
Bug fixes:
- Project Options: The "please wait" label is on top of the path being searched when finding help compilers.
- Project|Export to HPJ+RTF added a spurious page break before the first topic. When re-importing the exported files, this resulted in a spurious blank line at the start of each topic.
- Version 7.6.1 could not compile 16-bit WinHelp files because it added trailing backslashes to the bitmap paths, which the 16-bit WinHelp compiler can't handle.
HelpScribble 7.6.1 – 15 May 2006
HelpScribble 7.6.1 fixes two bugs in the improvement made in version 7.6.0 to preserve the layout of topics using tabs when compiling into HTML Help.
- Bulleted lists were sometimes compressed into a narrow width when compiling into HTML Help
- Tab offsets were not calculated correctly when lines also used indentation via the buttons on the ruler when compiling into HTML Help format
Another bug occurring in version 7.6.0 only was also fixed. It caused HelpScribble to hang when importing certain HPJ+RTF WinHelp projects.
HelpScribble 7.6.0 – 24 April 2006
New features:
- Project Options, HTML Help: Option to automatically collapse the table of contents. When this option is on, clicking on a "book" node automatically expands that node and collapses all others. This style requires fewer clicks to navigate through a large table of contents, but makes it harder to get a complete view of the table of contents.
Improvements:
- HTML Help and Web help: convert tabs into span tags instead of single spaces; to get consistent results, set exactly one tab stop on the ruler for each tab on the line
- Project Options: Bitmap paths can now be relative to the folder containing the .hsc project file. It is no longer necessary to include the folder containing the .hsc file in bitmap paths itself.
- Spell checker: The button to download spell check dictionaries now also lists dictionaries that don't use the Western European code page
- TextMacros: Blanking out the name of the TextMacro and clicking the Change TextMacro button will no longer remove the TextMacro's name.
Bug fixes:
- Removing a topic's title caused HelpScribble to put {} into the title. HelpScribble will still put a placeholder into the topic text, which will be substituted when you type in a new title. You can easily delete this placeholder.
The only reason not to give a topic a title is to exclude it from the full text search in WinHelp. If you don't want the title to appear in the topic text, simply delete the title from the topic text, but leave the title itself in place in the Topic Grid and the TopicBar. - TextMacros: Deleting or changing the name of a TextMacro without a name no longer causes an Access Violation error.
HelpScribble 7.5.2 – 12 December 2005
HelpScribble 7.5.2 includes a new version of the HelpContext property editor for Delphi 2006. No changes were made to HelpScribble itself.
HelpScribble 7.5.1 – 27 October 2005
Improvements:
- HelpTools|Create Target now strips non-alphanumeric characters from the target name, since the help compiler doesn't support those.
- Project, Flat Manual: The build tags specified in Project Options are now taken into account, so you can easily build different editions of the manual, just like the help file.
- Project, Make: Warn if the output folder is on a network drive, which may cause the CHM file not to work.
- Web Help: The character set is now indicated in the HTML files. The indicated character set is the windows code page that corresponds with the locale ID you've selected in Project Options.
Bug fixes:
- 7.3.0: Table of contents entries using macros were not included in the compiled WinHelp file. HTML Help does not support TOC macros.
- 7.5.0: Pressing the Delete key anywhere in the table of contents editor would delete the table of contents entry. Now it will only do so when the list with the table of contents has keyboard focus.
- Index Editor: When adding subkeywords to a keyword, without adding topics to the main keyword (leaving it displayed in red), would cause the subkeywords to be added to the index as main keywords when compiling into HTML Help format.
- Links to targets using window names did not work when compiling into HTML Help format (HTML Help does not support secondary windows).
- Project|Open and Project|Reopen did not prompt to save the previous project if only the currently active topic was modified.
- Project|Show Help File showed the HLP file instead of the CHM file if both existed, and Project|Make hadn't been used since opening the project, even when the HTML Help compiler was selected in Project Options.
- SHG Editor: Saving heavily dithered images (which can't be compressed using the SHG format's run length encoding) as a true color SHG sometimes caused an access violation error.
- Spell checker didn't work properly with capitalized words if the spell check dictionary (e.g. the Catalan dictionary) contains no capitalized words.
- Web Help: Font tags were not always properly nested withing anchor, bold, italic and underline tags in the exported HTML, causing trouble with some browsers such as Opera.
- WinHelp: HelpScribble incorrectly removed some character set information when compiling into WinHelp format, sometimes causing non-English characters to be displayed incorrectly in the WinHelp file
- Delphi source code parser: Properties with parameters missed the trailling ]
HelpScribble 7.5.0 – 13 June 2005
New features:
- Command line: Export to web help; choose which compiler (16-bit, 32-bit, HTML Help).
Improvements:
- Contents Editor: Contents tree now supports the Insert and Delete keys on the keyboard.
- Contents Editor: The "change" button (yellow X) was eliminated. Changes are now applied automatically.
Bug fixes:
- Contents Editor: Deleting a topic did not automatically repaint the grid with topics. The topic will still be grayed out in the grid until the grid is scrolled or the topic is (de)selected.
- Index Editor: Items in the keywords and topics lists were spaced too narrowly on systems using large fonts.
- Web Help: Targets missed the </a> closing tag when converted into an HTML anchor.
HelpScribble 7.4.2 – 10 March 2005
This release fixes one bug, which occurred in version 7.4.1 only. Opening an SHG in the SHG editor without opening the HelpScribble project the SHG is used in would cause harmless but annoying "no such topic" errors.
HelpScribble 7.4.1 – 4 March 2005
Improvements:
- Browse Sequence Editor: The read, append and write sequence buttons now give a clear visual indication that they completed their task. For three seconds, an indicator will appear below the "browse sequence" drop-down list.
- Browse Sequence Editor: You can now sort the list of available topics alphabetically, instead of by Topic ID.
- HelpTools|Embed Flash now automatically adds the folder containing the Flash file to Bitmap Paths in Project Options. If the folder is not listed in Bitmap Paths, the Flash file won't be found when compiling the help file.
- SHG Editor: Unnamed hotspots now automatically use the title of the topic linked to as their name
- The Delphi 2005 VCL.NET version of the HelpContext property editor has been recompiled to work with Delphi 2005 Update 1. It will no longer work with Delphi 2005 without Update 1.
Bug fixes:
- Compiling a project into WinHelp format caused HelpScribble to hang on topics with {html=...} tags spanning across multiple lines.
- HTML Help topics used incorrect colors if the very first line in the topic was blank
- Project|Renumber Topics did not update its progress meter
- Spell checker user word list is now properly synchronized between multiple instances of EditPad Pro, AceText and HelpScribble
- When underlining a word, the space after the word is also underlined when compiling into HTML Help format or exporting to Web Help.
HelpScribble 7.4.0 – 22 November 2004
New features:
- View|Focus Editor: Keyboard shortcut (Shift+F11) for activating the topic text editor
- HelpContext property editor support for Delphi 8 (VCL.NET) and Delphi 2005 (Win32 VCL & VCL.NET).
Improvements:
- Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab move the focus from the topic text editor to the next or previous control, like Tab and Shift+Tab normally do
- Tab order of the toolbars on the main form is now more logical.
- HelpTools|Insert Button now works around a bug in the Microsoft WinHelp compiler that causes an error when a button's caption contains non-English characters. (The workaround is to add a space at the end of the button's caption, before the comma separating it from the topic ID. The space will become part of the button's caption in the help file.)
HelpScribble 7.3.2 – 19 July 2004
Improvements:
- HTML Help: Typing two spaces after a full stop no longer causes lines to start with a space if word wrap takes place right after the full stop.
- Print Topic List now prints the topics in the same order as they currently have in the Topic Grid.
- Windows Editor now disables its controls if no window is selected in the list.
Bug fixes:
- C include file was not generated when compiling into HTML Help format.
- Importing a help project did not always properly translate HPJ mapping IDs into HelpScribble Topic IDs.
- Importing a help project sometimes resulted in a trailling } after topic properties such as the topic title or keywords.
- https: links (i.e. secure links) added with HelpTools|Internet Link are now properly processed when compiling into HTML Help format.
HelpScribble 7.3.1 – 4 February 2004
New features and improvements:
- Add /q to the end of the command line to shut down HelpScribble after compiling from the command line.
- Project|Export to Web Help now stores all its settings, except the font substitutions, into the .hsc project file. The font substitutions are a global setting used for all projects.
Bug fixes:
- Entries in the table of contents for which a window was selected, or that pointed to another help file, were excluded from the table of contents when compiling into WinHelp format. This problem occurred in version 7.3.0 only.
- Bulleted lists were positioned too far to the left when compiling into HTML Help format, causing the bullets to become invisible under certain circumstances.
HelpScribble 7.3.0 – 2 January 2004
New features:
- HelpTools|Link to File: Easy way to link to external files such as Word or PDF documents that you plan to distribute along with your help file.
- HelpTools|Embed Flash allows you to insert a flash animation into HTML Help and Web Help projects. When compiling into HTML Help format, the .swf file is compiled into the .chm file. So you do not need to distribute the .swf Flash file along with the .chm HTML Help file.
- Help|Download Spell Check Dictionaries: Easy way to download and install spell check dictionaries
Improvements:
- Ctrl+Z will now undo the last change only; use Ctrl+Shift+Z to undo all changes to the current topic
- When two topics have the same context string and only one is included in the compiled WinHelp file using build tags, then a table of contents item pointing to one of those topics will now automatically point to the topic that is actually in the help file.
Bug fixes:
- Apostrophes (') in the table of contents appeared as question marks when compiling to HTML Help
- Topic|Footnotes no longer allows you to blank out the context string. Each topic in the final help file must have a unique context string. (You can have topics with the same context string in your project, if you use build tags.)
- Project|Make Flat Manual: linkTarget links were added as HTML links in a flat manual in HTML format, even when you indicated the manual should not contain any links.
HelpScribble 7.2.2 – 24 October 2003
Improvement:
- Project|Make and Project|Show Help File will now open HTML Help files at the topic you are editing in HelpScribble rather than the first topic. WinHelp files were already shown this way.
Bug fixes:
- Topic|Properties now flags the project as modified, so you will be prompted to save even if all you did was change the properties of a topic
- HelpTools|Insert Bitmap: The left and right aligment choices were ignored when compiling to HTML Help
- HTML Help files did not show the left hand pane with the Contents and Index tabs unless the options "full text search" or "show favorites tab" were active in Project Options, HTML Help. (This problem occurred in version 7.2.1 only.)
HelpScribble 7.2.1 – 7 October 2003
New features:
- Buttons that link to a topic now automatically follow Topic ID changes like regular linkID tags do.
- HelpTools|Insert Bitmap now allows you to insert JPEG files. Note that JPEG files are not supported by WinHelp.
- HTML Help files will now have a Forward button. Note that an HTML Help file must have a table of contents or an index if you want the button bar to be visible.
Improvements:
- Index Editor will now automatically remove duplicate keywords from all topics.
- \stylesheet tags in the RTF source introduced by copy/pasting from Word often confused the help compiler causing it to exclude many topics from the compiled help file.
Bug fixes:
- Index Editor allowed the same topic to be assigned more than once to the same keyword.
HelpScribble 7.2.0 – 24 June 2003
Improvements:
- When compiling to HTML Help, indentation is now preserved. When exporting to Web Help, you need to select the style attributes option to enable indentation.
- HelpTools|Link now offers a combo box listing all the targets in the help project so you can easily select the target to link to
- Browse button (...) for Output Folder on Project Options
Bug fixes:
- The Context String field in Topic|Properties should not allow spaces to be entered
- If only the HTML Help compiler is installed on a computer (i.e. no WinHelp compilers available), Project|Options would search for help compilers every time.
HelpScribble 7.1.0 – 29 April 2003
New features:
- HelpTools|Insert RTF codes allow you to insert raw RTF codes into the help text when compiling for WinHelp. Inserting raw RTF codes has been possible since HelpScribble 1.x, but was previously undocumented.
- Command line option to compile the help file and specify build tags
HelpScr.exe helpfile.hsc /c /btag1;tag2 will compile the help file as if tag1 and tag2 (and only those tags) were marked in Project Options: Compiler - Project Options, HTML Help: Enable full text search option.
- Browse sequence editor: You can now select many topics at once and move all of them using drag-and-drop or using the new arrow buttons
- Project Options, HTML Help: Enable favorites option
- HelpTools|Insert HTML Tags allows for direct insertion of HTML tags using {html=...}. Anything inside the {html=...} tag will be copied directly into the HTML source. These tags will be filtered out when compiling to WinHelp.
Improvements:
- Table of contents in HTML Help now uses help book icons rather than folder icons for the headers
- HelpTools|Insert button: You can now directly select a topic for the button to link to, in addition to selecting a WinHelp macro. If you select the topic directly, the button will also work in HTML Help.
Bug fixes:
- After having made changes in the browse sequence editor, HelpScribble did not mark the project as modified. Therefore, it did not ask to save the project when closing it if the only changes made in the browse sequence editor were the only changes.
- {rtf=...} tags for inserting raw RTF codes into the (WinHelp-based) help text are now automatically filtered out when compiling or exporting to HTML Help or Web Help.
HelpScribble 7.0.1 – 25 January 2003
Improvement:
- Project|Export to Web Help now uses the PNG/GIF option from Project Options: HTML Help. Changing the option in Project|Web Help will also update it in Project Options.
Several minor bug fixes:
- Certain controls on the Delphi source code parser were invisible on systems using large fonts.
- Changing a topic's context string in Topic|Properties now properly updates the topic's entry (if any) in the Contents Editor.
- Links such as {linkID=123>window4} with a window name containing digits, caused a "no such topic" error when compiling or exporting to HTML Help, Web Help or an HTML flat manual
- When compiling to WinHelp format, topics are now automatically excluded from the table of contents if they are excluded by the use of build tags. (Topics were already properly excluded when compiling or exporting to HTML Help or Web Help.)
- If a topic does not have a context string in the default Scribble1234 format, the Contents Editor would display the context string in the Topic drop-down list, rather than its title and id. (This fix only affects the way in which the Contents Editor displays the entry for such a topic. The table of contents itself was always properly created.)
HelpScribble 7.0.0 – 11 January 2003
New features:
- In Project Options, Compiler, you can now use (...) browse buttons to quickly select the help compiler you want to use.
- The SHG editor can now open GIF and PNG files to create a new SHG file, or to replace the bitmap in the SHG file you are editing in the SHG editor.
- The SHG editor can now export the bitmap of an SHG file to GIF and PNG files, in addition to BMP.
- HelpTools|Insert Bitmap now allows you to select GIF files. Note that when compiling or exporting your project to HTML Help or Web Help, GIF files will remain in GIF format, even if you select the PNG option in Project Options. The GIF/PNG choice is for converting BMP and SHG files which are not supported by HTML Help and web browsers. You cannot insert PNG files into your help project using HelpTools|Insert Bitmap, because WinHelp does not support them. However, if you manually type in a bmc tag referencing a PNG file, the image will be properly included in the help file when compiling to HTML Help format.
- Text and background colors for the HTML body tag can now be specified in Project Options. These colors are used when compiling or exporting to HTML Help, and when exporting to Web Help.
- There are bugs in the Microsoft WinHelp compiler that caused it to hang or crash when compiling certain projects with build tags. To work around this, HelpScribble will now interpret build tags by itself instead of letting the help compiler do this. HelpScribble will interpret the build tags when using Project|Make, regardless of whether you are compiling to WinHelp or HTML Help. When you use Project|Export to HPJ+RTF, build tags will be written to the exported files as before, leaving it to the help compiler to interpret them.
- When exporting to HTML Help or Web Help, HelpScribble will ask if the build tag selection in Project Options should be interpreted or not.
- Under Windows XP, HelpScribble will now use the XP style interface
- Project|Make now allows direct compilation into .chm HTML Help format. For this, a third compiler option has been added to Project Options
Improvements:
- Help compiler paths are now stored under HKEY_CURRENT_USER instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so non-Administrators can use HelpScribble under Windows NT, 2000 and XP.
- When exporting to HTML Help or Web Help, the filename of the .htm file of a topic is now determined by its context string. If the context string is the default Scribble1234, the filename will be hs1234.htm like before. If you set the context string to something else, the filename will be the context string in lowercase with a .htm extension.
- When compiling to HTML Help and exporting to HTML Help or Web Help, popup links now remain popup links (using JavaScript to open a popup browser window) instead of being converted to regular links
- Cache RTF->HTML conversion to speed up compiling and exporting to HTML Help and Web Help
- Project|Make will delete the hidden .gid file in the folder of the .hlp file. Sometimes, WinHelp forgets to update this file, which causes problems. So we delete it to force WinHelp to rebuild it.
Bug fixes:
- The Index Editor filtered out commas from subkeywords. However, WinHelp does allow commas in subkeywords. So the Index Editor will now filter out commas from main keywords, but not from subkeywords.
- Verification of the help compiler fails on certain Windows XP systems. So the verification was removed completely.
- Changing the Topic ID in Topic|Properties did not update all the links to that topic
- Build tags that were only used together with other build tags in the build tag properties of the topics, and never used on their own, were not written to the help compiler source files. This caused the help compiler to ignore those build tags. Because HelpScribble now interprets build tags by itself when using Project|Make, this fix only has an effect when using Project|Export to HPJ+RTF. In that case, HelpScribble will not interpret the build tags itself but write all topics and build tags to the HPJ+RTF files.
- \ulnone RTF tags were not properly handled when creating a flat manual in RTF format, causing underlining to appear it should not
- Spell checker will now completely skip all HelpScribble tags such as links, target definitions and bitmaps. Previously, only the tag names and common values were skipped.
Other changes:
- The concept of "topic footnotes" was renamed to "topic properties"
- When creating a new topic through the HelpContext property editor, the new topic will now get the ID of the current topic incremented by the setting in Project Options, just like Topic|New does. Note: Only the property editors for Delphi 6 & 7 and C++Builder 6 have been updated. Those for earlier versions of Delphi and C++Builder are still available and fully functional, but have not been updated.