StrawHelp on WinXP

I have installed StrawHelp program by Rick Murray on my WinXP EeePC and downloaded Tank’s GPIO.zip archive. Than I put GPIO manual from archive (renamed to GPIO.3d6) in the StrawHelp folder ‘Manuals’, start the program and see GPIO icon among other icons. But when I try to open this manual, I have a message: ‘Unexpected value for root directory pointer – was expecting 44, read 41688; will continue but this may not work out…’. I press OK and have next message: ‘Directory entry marker invalid at offset +1for directory $’. And nothing more…
The preinstalled manual’s open succesfully.
What do I do incorrectly ?

StrawHelp program by Rick Murray

Whoo! Somebody uses it! ;-)

‘Unexpected value for root directory pointer – was expecting 44, read 41688; will continue but this may not work out…’.

While StrongHelp manuals can have the root directory anywhere, it is my experience that ones where the root directory is elsewhere tend to have… “issues”.

‘Directory entry marker invalid at offset +1for directory $’.

Okay, now that sounds wrong.

What do I do incorrectly ?

Nothing. You reported it here. I noticed. Give me a while, I’ll go download the GPIO stuff and try it out with a debug build.

The GPIO StrongHelp file is broken.

‘Directory entry marker invalid at offset +1for directory $’.

That’s a bug, it should be giving the file pointer, not the file handle. ;-) Doesn’t matter, it is an informational message and doesn’t change anything.

Technical explanation of how the file is broken (justification for me saying this) follows. Reading this stuff is optional. :-)

There is no such thing at that location.

Rummaging around inside the file, there are two fragments which could be root directories – one is at &A85E and the other is at &AE0B. There’s a lot of rubbish in the file, I guess the author didn’t CleanCopy¹ it before release…

Trying to open the file on an emulator (with StrongHelp v2.81) pops up a message saying “Object ‘!Root’ not found in ‘GPIO’.”.

Patching in the locations discovered (in place of the &A2D8) does not work. The first is a damaged directory (can’t find !Root) and the second causes a corrupted page about something else to appear, saying “Reads the data byte from the extender?” and some other random junk including a “FREE” marker.

Sorry.

The GPIO Help file provided is broken.

¹ Something worth noting – I tried to CleanCopy the damaged file to see if it could recover anything and it made me a basic empty file that was 64 bytes long. Everything else was silently discarded. So, hint – if you write StrongHelp files, don’t use CleanCopy on your only copy of the file!

Thank you for the reply Rick.
The file is broken, but it seems that people use it. Else how is it possible, to use the module without any manual ? I will try this file on my Raspberry Pi…

The current GPIO StongHelp file has file has also been reported by a number of people on the newsgroups as being broken. One of the posters has contacted the author Tank.

That’s me – Tank has now corrected the StrongHelp file and it is now fully readable from his website.

Are there any beginners out there who wish to experiment with the Raspberry Pi’s expansion port? I have written a very simple procedure for controlling a matrix of 8 LEDs. The LED PCB can be obtained for a few pounds and simply plugs into the GPIO port.

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~riscos/riscos/Pi_LITEr/GPIO-tutorial.htm

Has anyone got StrawHelp working with Linux – running under Wine?

It seems to want to scatter modules around – pity they couldn’t run from StrawHelp Directory.

Has anyone got StrawHelp working with Linux – running under Wine?

I’d be VERY surprised if that works. It converts the StrongHelp to HTML and then throws that to a plug-innable version of MSIE to render.
If Wine is capable of running MSIE, you might have some success. Otherwise, not.

It seems to want to scatter modules around

Uh, no, it does not. I’m looking at the Clickteam installer file actions and nothing in StrawHelp’s installer places files outside of its own folder.

You are probably thinking of the additional “various dependencies” file. This stuff is supplied separately as it is one single download that caters for ALL of the VB5 applications. Furthermore, this stuff is supposed to go into \Windows\System32 – for the reason why, look on this very forum for the problems encountered by a program loading an earlier version of ABCLib than something else required.

pity they couldn’t run from StrawHelp Directory.

I take it that you are not that familiar with Windows. If WINE puts in a half-decent emulation, it ought to suffice to collect together the various DLLs and such within the StrawHelp folder. Windows does look there first (unless said module is already loaded in memory, in which case it will just use that). Details here → http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682586%28v=vs.85%29.aspx and for me, it is Desktop applications → Windows XP → SafeDllSearchMode (just before half way down the page).

That said:

• If you can’t get MSIE to work, StrawHelp won’t work.
• Placing all of the modules within the application folder would be like every single C program containing its own CLib. It might work…until something wants to use a newer CLib and then all hell will break loose.

If MSIE works and you try it, please let me know how you get on. I’d be interested to know if it’ll run under Linux.

By the way, has anybody tried ROView under WINE? My VeroDes program “sort of” works, but seems to want to draw everything as black. Not sure why. I wonder if ROView is affected likewise…

I have downloaded the new version of GPIO manual.
StrawHelp does the job well.
The first message ‘Unexpected value for root directory pointer – was expecting 44, read 41688; will continue but this may not work out…’ does not disappear. The second one ‘Directory entry marker invalid at offset +1for directory $’ appears no more.
I can read GPIO manual well. Thanks to all of you.
– Vladimir