Over two past articles I focused on the role of Help Insight and discussed possible customizations. While researching for this last article, I tried changing the XSL file in the ObjRepos (object repository) folder of Delphi, with no effect. I had missed the fact the actual "live" files are in the language subfolder, in my case "en" for English. The right file to edit, on my computer, is:
C:\Program Files\Embarcadero\RAD Studio\7.0\ObjRepos\en\HelpInsight.xsl
Here are some ideas to change the predefined XSL for Help Insight and get an extended output. In terms of actual information, the only that's not displayed is the full path of the unit containing the symbol definition. Notice also that the size of the output window depends on the content of the top div called main.
My extensions to the XSL are mostly at the end of the file, displayed below:
The effect of the templates with mode xmltohtml and attrotohml can be used to debug the data behind Help Insight, as they display a tree of the XML nodes in HTML, as for the TButton symbol below:
For local symbol you get much more information, including the full unit file name:
This is helpful to let you figure out the information behind Help Insight as you add comments. Finally the last template of the XSL file above makes a full copy of any comment portion enclosed in the HTML tag, letting you format the output freely, including any HTML tag including links (better to open them in a new page rather than in the Help Insight page). Below you can see the HTML in the comment, including a link to this blog, and the output below:
This is just the starting point of customizations you can do, and you can also change the CSS and the background image. The Help Insight pane opens up the ability to create fully customized viewers, driven by your source code and the comments you add to it. Demo XSL file download is here.