Manuals for instruments/FX/whatever, F1 and general access to necessary info.

This gets brought up every so often but I want to sort it out once and for all.
 
F1 to open manuals for synths and stuff is dicey on my system. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes things have a help button (which again sometimes works and sometimes not).
 
I keep a PDF copy of all documentation I can scrounge up on various things on my laptop but I also what to access things the old fashion way when needed (F1 or whatever) because I have no idea where those "additional" type manuals are stored and I don't necessarily want to scour everything and transfer them over (especially the shorter ones for things I don't use a lot).
 
So what's the trick(s) here? I do not keep my DAW online and have things set to use the Offline manual locally.
 
Essentially I'd like to hear any and all strategies for fixing F1, scouring my system for the local documention and whatever else I can do to find these friggen' manuals.
 
Example (and this is just an example): I was mucking around with the Roland Groovesynth. I wanted to find something specific about what the MIDI note reference was (on my controller I was having go down two octaves to get a C2 drum sound to play at what is C0 on my controller). Not a big deal. Just curious. There's no help button. I hit F1... nothing. I'm pretty sure there is a manual for it but damned if I can find it.
 
So yeah... this is a thread about scrounging for local docs. All ideas, experiences, methods, tricks, tips, links, locations, whatever completely welcome.
 
Also... it would be nice if Cake started a searchable online repository for EVERYTHING Cakewalk. Make it only accessible to paid customers via their store accounts if need be (but I'm of the mind allowing the world to see your manuals encourage legit sales more than help pirates).
 
Back to giving myself a synth headache.
 
Cheers.

Okay, cool and thanks. Is there a known solution to the "F1" issue? I recall sorting this out or reading a solution to that at one point but that was ages ago.
 
It's always been hit or miss and maybe, if I did fix it at one point, it has been reset with the upgrades.
 
Awesome as always, Mr. scook. You're a treasure.
 
Cheers.

Okay, so here is something crazy. I'm currently messing around with Cyclone. I made sure I click on an actual pad (which would normally trigger a sound if I had one loaded) THEN clicked F1.
 
There was quick flash in the upper right quadrant of the screen like a help screen was trying to load. Just a flash of the outline but nothing in it (in fact where the text/content would be was transparent and Sonar was vidible underneath so just the outline of the help window). It flashes for less that a second and it's gone.
 
I have never seen that happen before. Odd.

scook
I do the same and the Cyclone help opens behind SONAR and takes up the full screen. The help text is readable when I bring the screen to the top.

Aha! Yeah, I had checked the taskbar and did not see anything indicating that there was a hidden window. When I hovered over the SPlat icon and the open window list popped out the Cyclone manual was available. Clicked on that and it came to the surface.
 
Welp, there's that solved I guess. I would normally expect that "paged" type graphic for the icon (like I get with multiple folders or browser windows open) but perhaps due to my screen res it isn't visible.
 
Thanks. Hopefully this woks for all the other goodies.
 
Cheers.

BTW... Cyclone is kind of annoying me. It seems very picky about what files it'll accept. I know that I can/need to convert the files I actually want to use if they don't load (so really anything can work but you gotta screw with it in loop constructor) but it is a bit of a pain. The MIDI message mapping thing is kind of a pain too. Probably why, even though in theory this thing is cool, nobody really talks about it.
 
It really doesn't handle the hard stops well either. Causes pops. Kind of figured there would be an auto fade for that (or maybe there is and I just haven't figured it out yet).
 
Still interesting to mess with.

mudgel
Context sensitive help has been around for ages in Sonar. You know, click in the Console press F1 and get Console help etc. click on A Sonar plugin press F1 and get help for that plugin if there is any. Select Notation press F1, you get my drift. I mention it in just about every answer when I give people help about a function.

I can't remember a Sonar version where that wasn't the case. It's a pretty standard Windows operation for programs. Eg works in MSWord, Excel etc.

It was always just kind of hit or miss whether anything would pop up for me in the past which is why I stopped bothering... however since I keep the manuals on my laptop (and keep my laptop next to me in the DAW room so I can google stuff as well) if I needed some Sonar answers I'd just switch to the lappy.
 
That however didn't work for a lot of the Cake synths and effects (which reminds me I have to see if this will draw up help files for effects as well) because their manuals are separate from the main help file. As can be seen from this thread those special help files were hiding when I'd press F1. Now that I know they are (likely) underneath the Sonar window it's going to make things easier. Kind of odd.
 
Now that I'm thinking back into the foggy haze of my memory I seem to recall figuring this out a couple years ago as well and likely with the help of scook as usual. Just had so many down periods where I wasn't in front of the DAW so I lost a lot of these little tricks. Now that I'm in front of the DAW almost all day every day it should stick... especially since I'll be making heavy use of the manuals. I actually understand them now whereas before it might as well have been writtin in Chinese. lol