Dark Help for TC 11.51 - Updated February 19th 2025

[petermad]

.
New version of the Dark Help for Total Commander 11.02 is now available - see first post for download.

[DRP535]

Thanks for this, works great. On my backup computer running XP 32bit though, the TC installed there only picks up the original native CHM file and displays that rather than the new 11.02 one. When I press F1 there and look at What's new in this version I'm reading about the latest updates to v9.50. Something is obviously not set right in the configuration to point TC to use the new v11.02 help file. Where do I go to manually fix that?

Update: How do I force a new install after already having used the one-time auto-install routine by double-clicking the archive?. I've extracted the ZIP file and manually tried to install the INF file but it ends with "Installation failed." which isn't very helpful.

[petermad]

Update: How do I force a new install after already having used the one-time auto-install routine by double-clicking the archive?

Open any other archive, close it again and double-click on the archive you want to install.

[DRP535]

Thank you. Still perplexed as to why I still don't get a dark help screen in TC XP 32bit though, when it works perfectly in W7 64bit.

Is there a compatibility problem with this plug-in and it working in TC 32bit environment under Windows XP? Using 11.02 final 32bit version just for clarity.

[petermad]

Is there a compatibility problem with this plug-in and it working in TC 32bit environment under Windows XP? Using 11.02 final 32bit version just for clarity.

No - I just tested it under Windows XP 32bit - it works fine here. Do you see a TotalcmdDark.chm file in your Total Commander program directory?

[petermad]

11.09.23 Fixed: Button bar: cd path\office_document now behaves the same as in command line (takes CtrlArrowOpenArchive into account), usually places cursor on file instead of opening it as an archive. Append backslash to open as archive (32/64)

Due to this change in TC 11.02 the Extended Menu item "Help" -> "Install Addons for Total Commander" did not work anymore if CtrlArrowOpenArchive= is set to 0 or 4 in the [Configuration] section of the wincmd.ini file.

Please re-download for a silent update with a fix for this.

[DRP535]

No - I just tested it under Windows XP 32bit - it works fine here. Do you see a TotalcmdDark.chm file in your Total Commander program directory?

Yes, it is there.

[petermad]

Yes, it is there.

And what happens if you double-click on it - do you get dark help then?

Also, are you using a language file (running TC with any other language than English) - and if yes, which one?

And have you restarted your TC? TC caches the help file, so if you copy TotalcmdDark.chm to TC's program directory, but don't restart TC, then TC will continue to use the last used .chm file

[DRP535]

Yes, it is there.

And what happens if you double-click on it - do you get dark help then?

The darkhelp for 11.02 opens up as I expect it to.

Also, are you using a language file (running TC with any other language than English) - and if yes, which one?

I am only using English language file, however, it is a slightly customised English language file because I need the 1076="F7 New Folder" line added to force the correct display of the F7 menu button text, since the 32bit version gets this wrong and it won't be corrected.

And have you restarted your TC? TC caches the help file, so if you copy TotalcmdDark.chm to TC's program directory, but don't restart TC, then TC will continue to use the last used .chm file

No I haven't restarted TC yet. I can't do that immediately because it's in the process of a long duration network file transfer that I can't easily stop.

[DRP535]

Restarted whole computer, restarted TC, F1 still no darkhelp. Dunno what the problem is, everything else works perfectly.

[petermad]

2DRP535
What if you start TC with a clean ini file and switch to dark mode - does it work then?

[Fla$her]

2petermad
Please add style.css so that the colors can be customized.

[petermad]

2Fla$her
The colors are set mainly by the ie.css file inside TotalcmdDark.chm - how would a style.css help you customize the colors. You can edit ie.css yourself if you want other colors.

[Fla$her]

2petermad
I'm talking about external css, not embedded.

[petermad]

2Fla$her
I was not aware that external css can be used with .chm files - how does that work?

here is the css, that I have changed in ie.css for the Dark Help:

Code: Select all

body { background-color: #202020; color: #DCDCDC}
a:link { color:#00AA00;text-decoration:none;}
a:visited { color:#EE0000;text-decoration:none;}
a:active { color:#00CC00;text-decoration:underline;}
a:hover { color:#00CC00;text-decoration:underline;}

Very simple to go in and change in the .chm file, if you want other colors.

I use the same background and text color as TC does by default in Dark Mode.