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I am facing several problems in Delphi 2007 in regards to the XML documentation. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. At the moment, it nearly never works. I noticed that there are similar Problems already mentioned, but these workarounds don't work for me. Does anybody have an idea how the HelpInsight bug can be fixed, or which alternative I have to documentate the source code, so it can be visible inside the IDE?

Here is just an example. In this example, 3/4 documentations work. In my real project, maybe 1-2 of 50 work.

enter image description here

Update Some more screenshots:

This is a normal procedure in a class

enter image description here

and the procedure is called somewhere else in the class.

enter image description here

No help is provided in HelpInsight.

Cœur
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Daniel Marschall
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1 Answers1

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The error you describe is a bug still in Delphi 2010 at least, but fixed in Delphi XE4 ( I don't have XE..XE3 installed and can't test). You have yourself found the workaround to preceed the procedure/function name with the units name in the implementation.

Also to note, when you call the procedure elsewhere in code, like this

procedure WhatEver;
begin
  xx
end;

will show the HelpInsight document as expected, when hovering the mouse over xx.

Finally, no help can be provided for your statement of HelpInsight working only 1 or 2 out of 50 times, unless you show examples.

Tom Brunberg
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  • 1) That it is fixed in XE4 doesn't help me. We can't afford a migration to a new Delphi version. Not only the high costs of the product itself, but also incompatible third party components, and the migration to Unicode will cost thousands. 2) When I call `xx` somewhere in the code, the bug is still the same - no help is shown in HelpInsight, even if I change the procedure from `xx` to `Unit1.xx` . – Daniel Marschall Jan 20 '16 at 14:51
  • 3) I cannot provide real examples, as this bug appears nearly randomly and even vanishes or re-appears at each start of BDS. And I can't publish any sources of this project. However, I edited the original post, and added 2 new screenshots. 4) Aren't there any useable third party solutions to get this documentation in the IDE done? At the moment, Delphi is nearly unuseable for us, because we cannot documentate our functions in an efficient way – Daniel Marschall Jan 20 '16 at 14:52
  • @Daniel: If the bug was fixed in a later version, then you need to upgrade to that version to get the fix. In regards to "Aren't there any useable third party solutions?", that question is off-topic here, which is clearly stated in the [help]. – Ken White Jan 20 '16 at 19:23
  • @KenWhite I have a problem, and this is why I ask. For each bug, there are workarounds, so I am mainly searching here. And as I said, we cannot upgrade, because third party vendors like CrystalReports are incompatible, and we are not going to migrate 2000 reports into a new system. – Daniel Marschall Jan 20 '16 at 19:47
  • @DanielMarschall I guess you'll just have to accept that you aren't going to get help insight in this version and move on without it. No alternative. – David Heffernan Jan 20 '16 at 20:12
  • So in the year 2007, nobody documented their code in a serious way? I guess that's why people say that Delphi is a toy language. – Daniel Marschall Jan 20 '16 at 20:16
  • @DanielMarschall: Your last comment is useless. This has nothing to do with the Delphi language, and if you choose to keep your code in a decade old version of the IDE you have no room to complain. If you chose to depend on third-party components for which you can't get updates or source code, that's not the language's fault. The current version of Delphi has lots of features (both in the language and IDE) that weren't in D2007; it's not the language or IDE's fault that you can't use them. – Ken White Jan 20 '16 at 21:16
  • @DanielMarschall The problems with Help Insight have _absolutely nothing_ to do with whether anybody "_documented their code in a serious way_". None of the bugs you've described *prevent* you writing comments in the format you desire. If you navigate to the declarations, the comments will still be there. If you generate documentation from source in your build process, your doc-gen tool will read the comments and may/may not process them correctly. You're not even constrained to use the same commenting syntax as Help Insight if you so desire. – Disillusioned Jan 21 '16 at 07:02