Presagis

Somehow I lost access to 4.1 help files. If I click the creator_help.chm in the docs directory file from outside Creator - the help file open correctly. Creator 4.0 opens its help file correctly also. Maybe somehow somewhere in 4.1 the pointer to the help file got   lost – where?

Ben

Maybe somehow somewhere in 4.1 the pointer to the help file got ost

When Creator launches it resets the path to the help file by locating the mgfltx.exe and looking (relative to the exe) for ../docs/Creator_Help.chm.  As long as the Creator exe is in ROOT:/bin and the help file is in ROOT:/docs, the relative path from the exe to the docs folder should be correct.  If your paths match these, it’s hard for the Creator help file to “get lost”. 

Even if Creator did lose track of the help file during the modeling session, it should “reset” by stopping and restarting Creator.  Does it “reset” after restarting Creator?

I’ve had this happen more often than not, and I know others who all say the same.  If I’m in the middle of working on something and I decide that I need Help with a specific tool or process, it’s counter-productive to stop work, save, close the file, shut-down & re-open Creator and hope that the Creator_Help.chm file opens up.  So I keep a shortcut to the Creator_Help.chm file in my Windows Quick-Launch list in the Start button… it works.

Sometimes the Help function in Creator will find the help.chm file and open it, but the content on the right side will be blank, or maybe it’s both sides, can’t recall… but it opens up with no actual help in sight.

I’m certainly not suggesting that close-restart is THE solution to your problem.  I was just asking for diagnostic purposes (to get more info to help us understand the situations in which the help stops working).  If restarting Creator does “reset” it, this tells us that something in Creator may be the culprit.

Could you also tell us what Operating System you are working with?  And can you tell if it stops working more after doing certain things in Creator?  If so, which things seem to send the help file south?

This is the first we’ve heard of this so any additional sleuthing information you can provide will help. 
Thanks.

Sorry for not responding earlier I was away, however I solved the problem. The clue was your comment “(relative to the exe) for ../docs/Creator_Help.chm”  I went and deleted the Creator 4.1 icon from the desktop (obviously I’m working with Windows, and they are the XP kind) Then I created a shortcut of mgfltx.exe where its target was “C:\Program Files\Presagis\Creator_4_1\bin\mgfltx.exe” and placed it on the desktop. Seems like it did the trick.

Thanks

Ben

I think the clue you provided is that you installed Creator in a different location than the default.  By default Creator gets installed at:

c:\presagis\creator_4_1

you chose:

c:\program files\presagis\creator_4_1

Of course this should be allowed but I suspect that the original desktop icon installed may have had incorrect information in it (given the non-default installation folder).

In any event, you have given us something to explore.  Thanks for helping us track this down.
I’ll add more information on this thread if we discover anything…

Hmmm… I just installed Creator to c:\program files\presagis\creator_4_1 (as it seems you did) and took a look at the Icon that gets installed on the desktop.  It looks fine.  I then launched Creator through that icon and Creator was able to find the help file. 

At this point, I wonder if you could offer any other clues as to what might be different in your environment?
Thanks for any help you can provide.

I just had this issue happen to me again, so here’s the details while it’s fresh in my head..

Creator 4.1 recently installed in the default location on WinXP:
C:\Presagis\Creator_4_1\bin\mgfltx.exe
C:\Presagis\Creator_4_1\docs\Creator_Help.chm

I opened the database by double-clicking the .flt file in Windows Explorer.

While editing I selected Help>Help to get the questionmark cursor which I clicked on the Group Attributes window. 

The Help window opened, there was a list of topics in the left pane and the right pane was blank.  I typed some search terms in the Index tab on the left, since that’s what it opened to.  When I clicked on any of these topics nothing appeared in the right pane, it was completely blank. 

I just repeated the process as I was typing this, and the Help window opened the same way, Index tab & blank content area.  But this time when I clicked on a topic it loaded the content.  I’ve gone through it again 6 or 8 more times, and each time it opens with the content area filled with the “Group Attributes” topic displayed with a short list of related topics.  Also the left pane now contains the Contents tab, with the normal view of all of the “chapters” represented as closed books with a plus sign to expand them.  In other words, it’s working normally now.

In summary - the first time I opened the Help window it wouldn’t display anything in the right pane and it opened to the Index tab on the left pane.  The second time it started to behave the same way, but actually displayed the content after clicking a topic.  Every subsequent use of the Help window has it behaving 100% normally.

**EDIT**

I just noticed that the Help window isn’t finding any images, just red X’s.

This just happened again, I used the Help>Help tool (F1) to click on the Attribute Search window (so I could figure out the difference between “Creator Primary Color Index” and “Primary Color Index”)... and the Help window came up with the right side blank.  When I tried to click one of the topics on the left to see if something would come up, Creator crashed with an “out of memory” error.  Good thing I had just saved my work!