@KelvinC Have you made a downloadable offline help file for the WIP like the one available for Rhino 7?
If so what is the link?
Otherwise could you do so?
I realize that it would probably be an unwelcome distraction to re-release it with every new WIP release, but an occasional release that grows slowly stale until you can do another would be a great help. As it is I need to keep R7 open if I want to refer to a truly stale version with nothing on the new WIP stuff or else go to another building to refer to your on-line R8 version.
When and if this happens, it will be some time after V8 is officially released before it might be available.
I’m not involved in that part of development, but I think the Help file changes are just beginning as the interface freeze has to happen before we clean up the details and create the images that go in it.
I can easily create V8 offline help and it will update together with the online help. The problem is Rhino 8 won’t load offline help when it exists. I filed a bug report.
Yes. If you have the V8 offline help installed, pressing F1 opens the offline help, but the Help panel doesn’t. I believe it will be fixed in the next build of Rhino WIP.
Thanks, Kelvin. I have downloaded and installed the help file and confirmed that it shows up for F1 in this week’s WIP. Happily awaiting next week’s.
I do the installs as Administrator but normally run Rhino as a standard user. I noticed that the help file installs in the directory of the user running the downloaded file so that each user on the machine needs to run it in order to have the help available and using up an additional half GB of storage. Isn’t it possible to install the help someplace where it will be available to all users just as Rhino itself is? In my situation it’s not a big deal as I can just install it while running as the standard user but I can imagine that some others may find it inconvenient.
The reason for an on-line Help file is so we can make edits and updates to it. You will have the latest fixes.
By having the Help file installed locally, that automatic update process is broken.
Understood, John. It’s a tradeoff among scenarios. Kelvin did imply (if I understood correctly) that the downloadable file would eventually be updated synchronously with the online help so an offline user can get the latest one whenever desired by downloading it again. @KelvinC
@AlW
Maybe we can extract help files to C:\ProgramData\McNeel\Rhinoceros\8.0\Localization\en-us\help that can be accessed by all users, and make Rhino 8 look into the folder when loading help files.
RH-75379 Make offline help for all users instead of current user only
@AlW
I’ve updated the offline help self-extracting archive to install the files to the location for all users. The next build of Rhino WIP will also find help files from there. Thanks.