IDE Help Configuration

[dpb]

A 30-yr old project has resurrected and my old DOS development
environment (Brief editor/Watcom/specialized .btm files under JPSoft
4DOS/4NT) that I ran developing then isn't functional under XP and later
MS (Brief video driver crashes) so figured would just use the IDE for
what is, hopefully, a brief (pun intended :) ) set of modifications.

Issue, not a killer, but annoying is that the integrated help doesn't
find the help files altho the environment variable

WHTMLHELP=C:\OWATCOM\BINNT\HELP

is pointing to the right location and can open by pointing directly to
them (from Start Menu, say). Of course, this loses context-sensitive
which would be nice as the mod's they've made since I last left are in
C++ and I've studiously avoided it like the plague and they're where the
issues lay, unfortunately.

As a sidebar, the integrated help in the builtin editor _DOES_
work...anybody got a clue as to why and how to fix?

[Lynn McGuire]

I wonder if the 9 character environment variable name is causing a problem ? I cannot remember if DOS16 allowed environment variable
names longer than 8 characters, but I think it did.

Lynn

[dpb]

On 01/03/2017 2:19 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
...

>> Issue, not a killer, but annoying is that the integrated help doesn't
>> find the help files altho the environment variable
>>
>> WHTMLHELP=C:\OWATCOM\BINNT\HELP
>>
>> is pointing to the right location and can open by pointing directly to
>> them (from Start Menu, say). Of course, this loses
>> context-sensitive which would be nice as the mod's they've made since
>> I last left are in C++ and I've studiously avoided it like the
>> plague and they're where the issues lay, unfortunately.
>>
>> As a sidebar, the integrated help in the builtin editor _DOES_
>> work...anybody got a clue as to why and how to fix?
>
> I wonder if the 9 character environment variable name is causing a
> problem ? I cannot remember if DOS16 allowed environment variable names
> longer than 8 characters, but I think it did.
>
> Lynn

Thanks for the thoughts, Lynn...I dug out the old CD and just refreshed
the install and now that part works. The environment variable is the
value set by the Watcom environment batch file so presume that wasn't
the issue somehow.

The development environment is under XP SP3 and the target is 32-bit
console app so the old 16-bit DOS isn't the issue; what I have trouble
with is that the old 16-bit DOS Brief editor used direct screen Int21
writes and an update of the virtual DOS shell has killed it. It's been
a hit 'n miss proposition; it ran for years flawlessly, then an update
broke it, then another would fix it again and it might be years 'til
broke again. The last updates left it in the broke state, though,
unfortunately...I had used it so long and had written so many custom
macros extending the "out of the box" functionality it's really hard to
have to give it up. Fortunately, I gave up the consulting gig as
full-time some years ago so didn't have to deal with it as more than an
annoyance until now... :(

Anyway, I know you use C/C++ besides F77; I can't even get the header
include file to compile now...I'll post the problem and see if you can
see the issue but in another thread. (Not sure there's anybody else
monitoring ow.u.f any longer...).