On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 07:40:36 -0700 "Wolf Manos"
<wol### [at] to_much_spamcom> wrote:

>if I invoke the 'Help on POVRay Scene Language' from inside POVRay I get an
>error message:
>    An error exists in this Help file. Contact your application vendor for
>an updated Help file (1024)

  Hi, Wolf. The following message pasted in below may help you. It was
originally posted in the povray.windows group since it pertains only to
the Windows Help file.

-- 
Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

On Sun, 28 May 2000 23:56:42 GMT pro### [at] homecom (Rob Rippengale)
wrote:

>
>Been using POV-Ray for some time now, but just got
>into the newsgroups, and cannot see a better solution
>to a problem I have been having, so I offer my own
>workaround for the mysterious "error in Help
>file - contact your vendor" situation.
>
>If you don't know what I am talking about you can
>happily ignore the rest of this post.
>
>I am running the latest POV-Ray for Windows
>Version 3.1g.msvc.win32 (Pentium II optimized).
>
>I got tired of re-installing and finally discovered that the
>GID file associated with the helpfile seems to somehow
>get corrupted.
>
>Remove the GID file and it wll be recreated the next time
>you access the help file, but there is a twist - you have to
>also reboot before you try to use Help again. Don't ask
>me why. It's dark in there. Anyway I added some lines to my
>autoexec.bat file to clean away that GID file every time I boot.
>
>I seem to get the error much less often, and when I do get
>it, I just reboot and autoexec.bat cleans up. Put the following
>lines in your autoexec.bat file without the leading quote used
>here. Of course, you should also edit the path to reflect your
>own installion directory.
>
>"IF NOT EXIST F:\POVRAY\HELP\POVRAY31.GID GOTO AFTERPOV
>"ATTRIB -H F:\POVRAY\HELP\POVRAY31.GID
>"DEL F:\POVRAY\HELP\POVRAY31.GID
>":AFTERPOV
>
>Note the leading colon on that last line. It marks a GOTO destination.
>and should be the first character on that line.
>
>In case you can't guess, the "IF NOT EXIST" test avoids the error
>message that would happen if you try to remove the file when it isn't
>there (the file is only recreated when the help file is accessed), and
>the "ATTRIB" line makes the GID file "unhidden" so the "DEL"
>command can find it.
>
>Pretty simple, and it works, but I still have to reboot when I get the
>annoying "error in help file" message. It's a pain, but not so bad
>as re-installing POV-Ray.
>
>If a more permanent solution has been found and I have just not read
>enough newsgroup material, please enlighten me.
>
>Thanks,
>Rstudio (aka Probity, aka Rob Rippengale)

Post a reply to this message