[AD Mac] Help search oddity?

[R C-R]

Recently, I noticed that when I opened the help window in AD v1.5.5 & tried to search for anything, I got the usual popup list of suggestions but regardless of what I picked, including very specific things like "move tool" or more general ones like "clip," I got a blank window, sometimes after the "wait" spinner runs for a while & sometimes immediately.

 

At the time I had the second (?) AD 1.6 beta installed on my Mac. Before I posted this I wanted to see if the beta did the same thing so I launched it & got the message about there being a newer version. I then downloaded the most recent 1.6.0 (Beta 4) version & replaced the older beta with it. Help searches work fine with it, but when I relaunched AD v1.5.5 & retested its help search, I now get search results from the beta instead, at least judging from the icon that appears in the search results:

I have quit & relaunched both apps & experimented with both apps or only one running & I get some minor variations in the number of AD results found (like 19 instead of 14 for a "move tool" search) but it seems as if AD 1.5.5 now always retrieves help topics from the 1.6 beta instead of its own help books.

 

Anybody else seeing this or have a suggestion on how to get 1.5.5 back to searching its own help (assuming it is not doing that now)?

[stokerg]

Hi R C-R,

 

No issues here searching the help files.  All i could suggest would be to uninstall the Beta, check the out the help in 1.5.5 and check what help it looks to be searching. Then reinstall the Beta and check again.

 

In my test, i called up the Help file in 1.5.5 did a search and got my results.  Then leaving the Help window open, switched to the Beta and called up the Help file again.  This caused the Help window to be reset back to the standard Help Welcome page and then i searched again and from looking at the icon on the search results, it has searched the Beta help.  I've repeated the process several times and not been able to replicate the issue you've had.

[R C-R]

Well, I uninstalled the beta, restarted AD 1.5.5 & now I get a totally blank help window when I open help from the Help menu -- no spinning wait cursor, nothing at all. Oddly, I can still search & sometimes get similar results as above, the only difference being the circled AD Beta icon is now the 'missing icon' one. But even that is hit or miss -- even though the search dropdown populates with suggestions & choosing one of them starts the spinning wait cursor, after which I usually get a blank window again.

 

I would prefer not to try the 'nuclear' 1.5.5 app reset if at all possible -- I loose too much of the custom stuff I have done to set the app up as I prefer, so I wonder if there is a propcol or plist file in ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner I can delete that might be a more surgical solution. Maybe the com.apple.help.plist file?

 

I also noticed there is "com.apple.help copy.plist" file at the same location. Is this normal? It has an older date than ythe non-copy version.

[R C-R]

I think I have fixed this, but I am not at all sure how what I did fixed anything:

 

I used an old app called Pref Setter to examine the contents of my ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help.plist file. I discovered it contained two "RegisteredBooks," one of which referenced a /Library/Printers/Canon/BJPrinter/Resources/Help/CanonIJ_Driver.help file as item 1 in the "RegistrationOrder" key. That help file comes from an old Canon MP620 printer installer. It is effectively unsupported in recent versions of OS X; I just keep it around because the Canon driver still provides basic printing functions.

 

Anyway, I deleted all the references to it in the AD help plist file, resaved it, & suddenly help is working normally in AD 1.5.5 -- in fact, it seems to be faster than ever before. I have since installed the latest AD 1.6 beta (released yesterday?) & both help systems seem to be working fine now. Yay!

 

One question remains: the beta has no user Library/Preferences/com.apple.help.plist file, even after accessing its help several times. So now I wonder if the AD 1.5.5 version is needed, superfluous, might potentially cause problems in the future, or what. Any thoughts on if I should delete it?