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DocView IDE Integration

This page describes how fpGUI's DocView (INF documentation viewer) can be integrated with various IDE's to give you context sensitive help using a simple keyboard shortcut.

For this to work, we opted to use the External Tools feature of each IDE or programming editor. Alternative methods exist (like in the case of Lazarus IDE), but that requires recompiling the IDE - and that seems like just to much effort.

If you don't have DocView yet, you can compile DocView yourself from the fpGUI source code, or opt to download pre-built binaries of DocView and various INF documentation, by visiting these links:

Lazarus

The first example uses an environment variable FPCHELP which lists the INF help files you want DocView to use. How you setup environment variable depends on your operating system. For more details see the docview.inf help file, included with DocView.

Here we also setup the Ctrl+F1 keyboard shortcut to trigger loading DocView.

Lazarus example 1
Using DocView via an environment variable.

The second example makes use of the global BOOKSHELF or HELP environment variable that DocView automatically searches. We then simply supply a concatenated list of INF help files (no need to include their file extensions) DocView should use.

Also note that in this example we decided to use the F1 keyboard shortcut, so remember to disable the default F1 shortcut assigned in Lazarus's Environment Options dialog.

Lazarus example 2
Using DocView and various INF file names concatenated.

MSEide

As in the first Lazarus example, here we are using a custom FPCHelp environment variable that points to any FPC related INF help files. The value of the environment variable can be a directory or a concatenated list of INF help files.

MSEide example
Using DocView via an environment variable.

Delphi 7

In this example we simply decided to point DocView to the c:\apps\ directory and let it use all INF files it finds in that directory.

Delphi example
Using DocView via an environment variable.

EditPad Pro 7 (all purpose text editor)

As in the first Lazarus example, here we are using a custom FPCHelp environment variable that points to any FPC related INF help files. The value of the environment variable can be a directory or a concatenated list of INF help files.

Delphi example
Using DocView via an environment variable.

 

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