40tude Dialog: Tooltips (balloon help) has gone missing

[VanguardLH]

40tude Dialog 2.0.15.41
Windows 7 Home Premium SP-1

Awhile back the tooltips (popup balloon help) would appear when I
hovered the mouse point over a button in a toolbar. This help me know
what the button did since there are many buttons in the toolbars and I
only occasionally used some of them.

For a couple weeks, or more, the tooltips have disappeared. I cannot
find an option anywhere in Dialog's config screens to enable/disable the
tooltip feature. In the toolbar.ini file, the setting is ToolTips=1.

Any ideas why tooltips would disappear only in Dialog? They show up in
other applications. I've right-clicked on a toolbar and selected
"Configure buttons/shortcuts" to get at the "Customize Toolbars" dialog
but still not option in there to show tooltips.

Just in case I might be going mad and it was my imagination that there
were tooltips in Dialog, I found:

http://dialog.datalist.org/downloads/41update.html
-Fixed tooltip hotspots being off by half a character width (#0002421)

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/update-40tude-dialog-2-0-11-1-beta-34-released-t1971480.html
-Fixed: The number of subscribed groups shown as a tooltip on the
"Subscribed" tab sometimes showed a wrong number

So Dialog should be showing tooltips unless some setting was disabled
but I can't find that setting. If the setting exists, I'm not going mad
but my eyes are failing.

As another consequence of no tooltips, I recall it was possible to have
a popup showing the full headers of a message (instead of clicking on
"Raw message" to see them). Under Settings -> General settings -> Misc,
there is the "Show full article headers as hint in the body header
panel" option. When enabled, and as I recall, hovering the mouse
pointer over the header section of the body panel popped up a list of
all the headers for that article. This isn't working, either.
(Apparently the Dialog author called these popups or ballons as tooltips
in his bug tickets and as hints in the program.)

I have gone into Windows 7 performance, advanced tab, and enabled all
gimmicks for pretty-fying the GUI. I exited and restarted Dialog but
the tooltips were still missing. The EnableBalloonTips registy item is
set to 1 (enabled). I've ran out of where to look to get tooltips to
start working again in Dialog.

[Bernd Rose]

On Sat, 26 Jul 2014 22:49:00 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

[Tooltips on Button Bar]

> Any ideas why tooltips would disappear only in Dialog? They show up in
> other applications. I've right-clicked on a toolbar and selected
> "Configure buttons/shortcuts" to get at the "Customize Toolbars" dialog
> but still not option in there to show tooltips.

The tab sheet containing the toolbar on/off option is disabled in this
dialog. It doesn't work, anyway. IMHO, Marcus intended to implement a
setting for tooltips on toolbar, but stopped improving his program,
before he got there...

> Just in case I might be going mad and it was my imagination that there
> were tooltips in Dialog

Usually, there are. Maybe you try a clean /parallel/ install of Dialog,
to rule out system settings. Even if other programs /do/ show tooltips,
there could be sth., that effects Dialog (and maybe other Delphi-based
programs), specifically. Afterwards, copy one *.ini after another from
you current installation. (Keep backup of every clean file.) If the
tooltips vanish, do a file compare between clean and current version
of the *.ini in question.

> As another consequence of no tooltips, I recall it was possible to have
> a popup showing the full headers of a message (instead of clicking on
> "Raw message" to see them). Under Settings -> General settings -> Misc,
> there is the "Show full article headers as hint in the body header
> panel" option. When enabled, and as I recall, hovering the mouse
> pointer over the header section of the body panel popped up a list of
> all the headers for that article. This isn't working, either.

You need to restart Dialog after changing above setting. It /should/
work!

> (Apparently the Dialog author called these popups or ballons as tooltips
> in his bug tickets and as hints in the program.)

Inside the *.ini-files and internally, Marcus mostly used the term "hint".

Doing above should point to (or rule out) system settings. Afterwards,
it should be easier to localize the source of your problem.

Bernd

[tlvp]

On Sat, 26 Jul 2014 22:49:00 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

Have you tried Help > [Index] tab > Tooltips ? Help > [Index] tab > View ?

(In Dialog, I mean.) There's an awful lot of stuff there, perhaps something
to ease your pain, I can't be sure, I didn't go through all of it :-) .

Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

[VanguardLH]

Bernd Rose wrote:

Vanguard wrote:
>
>> Just in case I might be going mad and it was my imagination that there
>> were tooltips in Dialog
>
> Usually, there are. Maybe you try a clean /parallel/ install of Dialog,
> to rule out system settings.

I figured that was a possible diagnosis of Dialog. I wanted to ask
about this before going through all the work of another install, testing
it, and if the balloon help showed up then having to migrate all the
config and data files over from the old instance. It's always possible
to miss an option or not understand it as titled or described. Thinking
there is no such option and not finding it yourself doesn't mean there
isn't an application setting. So I wanted to ask before building a
clone (start fresh, bring over old parts).

>> As another consequence of no tooltips, I recall it was possible to have
>> a popup showing the full headers of a message (instead of clicking on
>> "Raw message" to see them). Under Settings -> General settings -> Misc,
>> there is the "Show full article headers as hint in the body header
>> panel" option. When enabled, and as I recall, hovering the mouse
>> pointer over the header section of the body panel popped up a list of
>> all the headers for that article. This isn't working, either.
>
> You need to restart Dialog after changing above setting. It /should/
> work!

I've restarted Dialog after trying every setting that might've affected
tooltips. For example, when I modified the toolbar.ini file to change
ToolTips=1 to zero, I restarted Dialog. No effect so I changed it back
to 1 and restarted Dialog.

Just to be sure, I changed the above option (enabled), restarted Dialog,
but still don't get the popup headers list when hovering over the header
section in the body pane.

Oh well, looks like I'm stuck with a parallel install (I'll just rename
the existing Dialog folder), see if tooltips, balloons, hints, or
whatever other name will show up as before. Then I'll have to migrate
by config and data files to the new instance. If it works but stops
after migrating the old files into the new instance then one of those
causes the problems. I doubt it'll be a file under the data subfolder
but maybe one of the .ini files.

[VanguardLH]

tlvp wrote:

> Have you tried Help > [Index] tab > Tooltips ? Help > [Index] tab > View ?
>
> (In Dialog, I mean.) There's an awful lot of stuff there, perhaps something
> to ease your pain, I can't be sure, I didn't go through all of it :-) .

That mentions the tooltip that shows up when hovering the mouse pointer
over a shortened newsgroup name to show the long name in the popup. I
don't see that tooltip, either, but then I wouldn't expect to since all
the newsgroups names are full length. None are shortened.

Besides, the tooltips, balloon help, or hints that I miss are those for
the *toolbar* buttons. When I hover over, say, the cylinder squished by
two walls icon, it used to say Compact. When I hover over the red
circle with X button, it used to popup to say "Stop". There are no
longer any tooltips for the buttons.

All the *toolbar* tooltips are missing. I can't tell what each icon
does in the toolbars (in the tree panel and in the header panel). I've
used several on a regular basis so I remember what they do but several
are used infrequently and I rely on the tooltips to let me know what
those buttons do.

[Bernd Rose]

On Sun, 27 Jul 2014 06:58:43 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

> I've restarted Dialog after trying every setting that might've affected
> tooltips. For example, when I modified the toolbar.ini file to change
> ToolTips=1 to zero, I restarted Dialog. No effect so I changed it back
> to 1 and restarted Dialog.

As I wrote, tooltips on/off for the toolbar is /prepared/ via source code
and *.ini files, but not enabled. ToolTips=X has no effect, whatsoever,
AFAICT.

The tooltip settings, that /are/ evaluated (and that /can/ be altered by
GUI) are HintCB0 ... HintCB4 <General Settings><View><Show short descr...>
and Fullheaderashint <General Settings><Misc><Show full...>.

> Oh well, looks like I'm stuck with a parallel install (I'll just rename
> the existing Dialog folder), see if tooltips, balloons, hints, or
> whatever other name will show up as before. Then I'll have to migrate
> by config and data files to the new instance. If it works but stops
> after migrating the old files into the new instance then one of those
> causes the problems. I doubt it'll be a file under the data subfolder
> but maybe one of the .ini files.

I also don't think Data being the culprit. IMHO, you should still regard
your current setup as main and restore it after your tests. This prevents
anything else going amiss. If you patched your *.exe file someday in the
past, you may consider to first start a pristine .41 *.exe from your
current Dialog setup. You can name this unaltered *.exe any name you
like. So both *.exe files can reside side-by-side without problems.

Bernd

[VanguardLH]

Bernd Rose wrote:

> The tooltip settings, that /are/ evaluated (and that /can/ be altered by
> GUI) are HintCB0 ... HintCB4 <General Settings><View><Show short descr...>
> and Fullheaderashint <General Settings><Misc><Show full...>.

But those options look to only apply to shortened newsgroup names, not
to toolbar buttons.

> I also don't think Data being the culprit. IMHO, you should still regard
> your current setup as main and restore it after your tests. This prevents
> anything else going amiss. If you patched your *.exe file someday in the
> past, you may consider to first start a pristine .41 *.exe from your
> current Dialog setup. You can name this unaltered *.exe any name you
> like. So both *.exe files can reside side-by-side without problems.

I'll probably first test with whatever dialog.exe comes in the installer
package. If balloon tips show for toolbar buttons with that executable
then I'll slide in the dialog.exe for v41 that I've got in
dialog.41.zip.

I've got the dialog.84.zip beta file but, as I recall, I had tried it,
found problems, and reverted back to v41.

I can do the parallel install, get back to v41, and the balloon tips
still work. Then I can just copy over the data subfolder. It's the
toolbar setup and scripts that I'm most concerned about. Hopefully I
can just copy over the Dicts and Scripts subfolders for dictionary adds
and to get the scripts (hopefully I don't have to recompile and load
each to make them effective inside of Dialog). But what about the
toolbar setups? Will copying the settings.ini and tool(bar*|dock).ini
files suffice? I don't remember Dialog storing its settings in the
registry but I also don't remember someone saying Dialog was portable.

[Bernd Rose]

On Sun, 27 Jul 2014 14:27:35 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

[HintCB0 ... HintCB4, Fullheaderashint]

> But those options look to only apply to shortened newsgroup names, not
> to toolbar buttons.

Yes. IMHO, there /is/ no toolbar option apart from the one in toolbar.ini,
that never gets evaluated at runtime. That's why checking a clean setup
is so important... ;-)

> I've got the dialog.84.zip beta file but, as I recall, I had tried it,
> found problems, and reverted back to v41.

The .41 is, IMNSHO, the /only/ version, that should be used.

> I don't remember Dialog storing its settings in the
> registry but I also don't remember someone saying Dialog was portable.

The only information, a Dialog setup writes to the Registry, is the
registration as default Mail and News program. (If this option has been
selected during setup.) If this registration isn't necessary, Dialog
can be considered portable. (Every setting is stored inside the Dialog
folder and its subfolders.)

Dialog must not be installed into a managed folder like "Program Files",
because it isn't UAC-aware (too old). But that's about it. Copy the
whole folder to an USB thumb drive, and it will run.

Bernd

[tlvp]

Sorry. I was trying to be helpful, but failed. I should have remembered:
Silence is Golden. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Cheers, -- tlvp

[VanguardLH]

Well, I did a parallel install. Balloon help was there. Copied over
the DATA subfolder. Balloon help okay. Copied over the config files
and still the balloon help would appear when the mouse was hovered over
a toolbar icon. Slid in v41 of the dialog.exe file and still balloon
help worked.

Looks like I'm back to where Dialog was before with both the balloon
help working and all the toolbars, scripts, and newsgroups they way they
were. Don't know what the balloon help disappeared for the toolbar
icons.

Thanks for the help.