Application Guide - example of using
Step 1 - create AppGuide viewer
- Open AppGuide.dpr project from directory AppGuideExe
- Open Project settings and in tab Application set Title value, this string should be unique for each application,
remember this value for later
- Change Caption of Guide Form to any text and you can change other properties of form too
- Compile project
Now new Guide application (AppGuide.exe) is created.
Step 2 - implementation of AppGuide to application - link application with AppGuide
- Open any project or create new one
- Find main form (or autocreated datamodule) and place TAppGuideInterface to form
- Set value of property ContentFileName to any filename
(e.g. Guide.txt or Help.txt for file in same directory as project, eventually with full path for file in different directory,
you can set it in runtime too)
- Set value of property GuideAppName to exactly same value as you used in step1 for Title of AppGuide.exe
- You can change value of property GuideExeName to any other name or path of Guide viewer
(if you don't use AppGuide.exe or you use different directory than project)
- Copy file AppGuide.exe from step1 to project directory (or to different directory according previous point)
- If you want to use "Do not show again" function, place PropSaveFile component to form (or use existing one)
and set property PropSaveFile of TAppGuideInterface
Step 3 - implementation of AppGuide to any form
- Place TAppGuide to each form, where you want to use AppGuide (including main form)
- Set value of property AppGuideInterface to interface created in step 2 (add main form to uses section)
- Set value of property AutoShow (true=Guide is displayed automatically after form is shown)
- You can set value of property Topic, in other case Topic is got from HelpFile property of form,
if HelpFile is empty then Topic is set to FormName
- For user defined Topic in runtime you can use event OnGetTopic
Step 4 - creating of help file
- Create empty new file with name as you set in property ContentFileName in step2.
- Open AppGuideEditor.exe from directory AppGuideEditor and find and open the help file
- Create all needed topics (usually TopicName is the same as name of Form)
- In help file can be used HTML formatting tags, links to http, mail or file,
links to another topics or special links for commands to application
- For example of help file download demo application
Now you can run project and try function of AppGuide.
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