Help On Help Please

[Anthony Edward Cooper <aecooper coosoft plus com>]

   Hello,

   I am currently developing an application called mtn-browse. It uses 
Perl Gtk2 bindings. Everything has worked out fine so far apart from I 
cannot get the help working. It is probably something fairly basic that 
I am doing wrong but I can't find any help on the matter (only other 
people having the same problem).

   Details:
      OS: WhiteBox Linux Respin 1 (RedHat AS4U3 clone, i686).
      Ver: Gtk: 1.2.10 Gnome: 1.4.1.2 (as given by gtk-config --version 
and gnome-config --version)

   Why an older version? 1) I started developing this for work (will be 
published under GPL3) and they use RHAS4U2. 2) I wanted to reach a wider 
audience rather than go with the bleeding edge so to speak).

   I initialise the app with:

       Gnome2::Program->init("mtn-browse", 0.51);

   and call up help with:

       Gnome2::Help->display("mtn-browse.xml");

   and I get on stderr:

Gnome-WARNING **: gnome-program.c:987: Directory properties not set 
correctly.  Cannot locate application specific files. at ./mtn-browse 
line 676.
*** unhandled exception in callback:
***   Unable to find the GNOME_FILE_DOMAIN_APP_HELP domain at 
./mtn-browse line 676.
***  ignoring at ./mtn-browse line 342.

   I basically copied one of the existing Gnome help files into the 
current directory where I'm developing the app so I could test the 
general principle.

   1) What am I doing wrong? And how do I go about correcting it?
   2) Does one need the extra support files have seem to go with the 
xml files and is there a simple way of generating them. Remember I am 
developing a Perl app and so don't have a make file as such (as 
generated by say Glade) so I am after a set of simple commands one can 
do on the command line or in a dedicated make file just for generating 
the help file(s).

   Another relevant point is that mtn-browse is designed to be 
installed where the user wants rather than forcing them to install it 
under /usr. Therefore I need to be able to find the mtn-browse help 
files where ever they may be located (so I need to tell Gnome where to 
look - I guess this is done through API calls and/or the environment). 
How can this be done?

   Sorry for the list of questions but I have spent some time looking 
on the web for help, probably in the wrong place admittedly, but on this 
topic I have come to a dead-end.

   Many thanks for any help in advance.

   Yours faithfully,

   Tony Cooper.