Windows 8 and Help Files

I seem to recall that my older Vista machine didn't work with the old school .chm windows help files. It seems Windows 8 isn't much better. I have a calculator app Excalibur that will pop up a help window with an index, but none of the entries seem to have any help on them.

I want to program some functions and I can't remember if the inverse key will work with them. The inverse key on Excalibur is a bit like the function keys on the HP calculators, but it only shows in the conversion mode to invert the sense of the conversion. I am adding my own conversions and would like to have the use of this. I also can't remember how all the programming functions work and would like to read up on this.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman
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Don't know if this works in win8 Here's my notes for win7

Add hlp to vista or windows 7 Copy files from xp put ftsrch.dll in /windows/system32 put winhlp32.exe in /windows have to take ownership and get access to delete the old file

didn't bother with other files. There's also a .wmu file to install it for real, but didn't want the hassle.

Reply to
mike

Am 15.11.2014 um 08:26 schrieb rickman:

.chm works --- it's its predecessor format, .hlp, that doesn't, because the viewer isn't part of the default installation any more.

But as of Vista (and some security update to earlier versions), Windows is picky about where your .chm files come from. If you got them from the net, and just unzipped them, Vista will presume they're unsafe, and refuse to actually use them. And in somewhat typical Microsoft manner, the symptoms of this refusal are completely indecipherable: there's no explanation what it refused to do, let alone why; it just says "this page cannot be displayed".

The primary ways around this are

1) Use a proper installer. "Just unzip it somewhere and run" doesn't work any more.

2) Manually remove the "this came from the internet" taint mark on the file (explorer -> properties -> {I forgot ;-) } )

Reply to
Hans-Bernhard Bröker

That was it. The property says, "This file came from another computer" or words to that effect. Once you click the "unblock" button the text goes away. I don't think I've ever seen a "one time" button on a property dialog before.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

PS This didn't solve my real problem. I'm trying to find out how to access the inverse state variable so I can write my own conversions with inverses.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

rickman wrote in news:m484pt$qji$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

I don't know details, but this sounds like hidden information, which is not part of the file itsself. Did you try to copy the file onto a FAT formatted memory (USB stick) and then copying back to your PC harddisk? Is the message "...came from another..." still there?

Maybe searching vor ADS / alternate data streams will help.

Herbert

Reply to
Herbert Demmel

I probably did something like that. I had it on my older computers and moved it to this one when my last laptop died. It doesn't seem to require "installation", just unzip it to a convenient directory. Now that Windows copes with writing to the "Program Files" directory that is where it is living. I'm not sure where Windows puts the ini file. I'll need to dig that up some day. I hope it is text and not binary formatted. I have some old programs that I might want to import. Using the calculator is a bit awkward to program. I am more happy with a text editor.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

The domain mark is a secondary NTFS stream on the file. Copying to/from FAT is an easy way to remove it.

Programmatically, you can enumerate the streams in the file, find the one with the domain information and delete it.

George

Reply to
George Neuner

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