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Alexander Liberov edited this page Oct 30, 2026 · 1 revision

ide-help-line

The help line sits at the top of the drag-lint dock page (View > Tool Windows > drag-lint). Type part of a feature's name, pick one of the matches -- each shows where the feature lives in the menus -- and its help page opens in your browser. The All features... button next to it opens the complete feature list.

What it does

  • Typing filters the published feature list. A feature matches when what you typed appears in its title, in the caption of one of its menu items, in its registry id or in its command-line verb. The one-line summary is not searched.
  • Matches are ranked: title starts with the text, then title contains it, then a menu caption contains it, then the id or verb. At most 12 are shown.
  • Each row reads <title> - <menu path> (the shortest path when a feature has several), <title> - CLI: drag-lint <verb> for a command-line-only feature, or just the title.
  • Keys: Down / Up move through the list, Enter (or a double-click) opens the selected feature, Esc clears the line. Enter with no list open opens the first match.

How to turn it on

Nothing to turn on: the line is part of the dock page. Two menu items reach it:

  • drag-lint > Help > Help on a feature... -- shows the dock and puts the caret in the help line.
  • drag-lint > Help > All features (web) -- opens the complete feature list.

The two older Help items (IDE Menu Reference, Effect Summary Legend) now open their pages through the same help root.

The Help root setting

In the IDE options dialog (Tools, Options, Third Party), open the drag-lint General page, group Help:

  • Help root (URL or folder) -- where help pages are opened from. Two forms:
    • the website, default https://www.delphi-rag-lint.com; a feature page is <root>/help/dl/features/<id>/;
    • an offline copy: a folder (C:\dl-help) or a file:///C:/dl-help URL that holds the rendered help site. Pages are then opened as <root>/help/dl/features/<id>/index.html. A plain folder is stored as a file:/// URL; trailing slashes are dropped; an empty value means the website.
  • Test opens the all-features page of the root exactly as typed, before you press OK.

Where the feature list is read from

The list of features is the generated help\dl\index.json. The plugin looks in three places and uses the first that exists:

  1. <engine folder>\help\dl\index.json -- the folder of the configured drag-lint.exe; the release package installs the file there.
  2. <help root folder>\help\dl\index.json -- only when the help root is an offline copy.
  3. <plugin BPL folder>\..\..\WWW\help\dl\index.json -- a developer checkout.

The list is read on the first keystroke and re-read when the file changes. When none of the three exists, the match list shows (feature list not installed: help\dl\index.json); All features... and the Help menu still work.

A feature id that the list does not carry opens the all-features page rather than a missing page.

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