Re: Default HTML Helper App?

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2004-08-02 at 13:32, Jeshua Lacock wrote:
> (I apologize for cross-posting)
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> I am trying to get the Gnome Help working here on Mac OS X with GNOME 
> 2.6, and I cannot find where I may specify to use by default, my 
> wrapper for launching HTML.
> Is there a configuration file that specifies what browser to use?
> 
> Any hints, help and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Gnome help files are all in DocBook, not HTML.  When you click a Help
button in an application, a ghelp:// URI is constructed and the handler
for that URI scheme is called, which under normal circumstances is yelp.
It's all a bit hackish, but it works, mostly.

To switch the help browser, you need a program that can take a ghelp://
URI on the command line.  If the documentation is in DocBook, then the
application will have to understand DocBook.  It's entirely possible to
force the documentation to be converted to HTML and installed as such,
and then you simply need a program that can take a ghelp:// URI and
display HTML.

Best case, if you're trying to get things to integrate nicely, would be
to convert the DocBook to whatever is needed by the OS X help system,
which would be HTML plus some extra files.  Then write a small program
that accepts ghelp:// URIs, finds the right file, opens the OS X help
browser, and points it to that file.

I've been working on fancy build tools for documentation at the moment. 
I've already been threatened^Wbribed by certain members of the Gnumeric
community to figure out how to get the help stuff to integrate nicely
with Windows help.  I don't really have a whole lot of time, but I can
provide pointers, as long as I can steal stuff back for the build tools.

--
Shaun