Re: New member and Nautilus Help Browser

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* jfleck@inkstain.net (jfleck@inkstain.net) wrote at 23:47 on 21/08/00:
> On Thu, 17 Aug 2000, Laszlo Kovacs wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Where are the info and man files picked up from? For man it looks
> > obvious to be prefix/man, but that is not the case for me.
> > 
> 
> Look in nautilus/components/help/help-method.c
> 
> I believe it's looking in /usr/info and/or /usr/local/info for the info
> files. I've not worked on the man files - not sure where it's picking 'em
> up.

This is not true :) 'info' has nothing to do with help-method.c - You
'help-method.c' generates the gnome-vfs module called 'libvfs-help.so' this is
not used for 'info:' URIs - libvfs-translate.so is used for 'info:' URIs.


libvfs-translate.so just basically does a 'pipe:gnome-info2html2 <whatever
comes after 'info:'>' - So you will have to look in the gnome-info2html2
program to see how/where the stuff is picked up. I can tell you right now from
source the /DEFAULT/ place it looks for is /usr/info - but you can add more
directories using the INFOPATH variable.

We will _ALWAYS_ look in /usr/info - but say you have
INFOPATH=/gnome/info:/usr/local/info - We will look in those two directories
after we look in /usr/info

Apparently a 'bug' in the application is that it does not detect 'info' files
that do not have 'info' in their names. The only application on my system
(RedHat 6.1/6.2) that installed info files without a '.info' somewhere in it
is 'texinfo' so that doesn't work :(

'man:' also does not use libvfs-help.so (it uses libvfs-translate.so) so it is
up to 'gnome-man2html2' to figure out the path, and as far as I can tell (a
quick 2 second browse of the source code) it uses 'man -w' to do that. All man
files work as far as I know
 
> > I tried your gdiskfree.xml file, it is not picked up if I put it in
> > prefix/share/gnome/help, but it is displayed if I give the whole path
> > explicitely.

The 'help:' URI uses libvfs-help.so and it works :) This is how it works:

There is an 'absolute' and a 'relative' mode. In absolute mode you can do:
help:/path/to/file.sgml

The above always works :)


In relative mode you can do:
help:<appname>

Now - for this to work currently you need to have the SGML or XML file
installed as: $(prefix)/share/gnome/help/<appname>/<locale>/<appname>.xml (or
sgml)

$(prefix) in my case is '/usr' and <locale> is 'C' - so an example installed
document would be:
/usr/share/gnome/help/C/gdiskfree.xml


The way it /should/ work right now is when you do 'help:<appname>' it will
first look for gdiskfree.xml - if it doesn't find it, it will then try
gdiskfree.sgml - if it doesn't find it, it should use 'index.html' -
Unfortunately, the index.html part doesn't work yet - Even if it did work
though it would be 'broken' (links in the doc will not work) this is because
the help is rendered in gtkhtml and not mozilla. This is a pending bug

I hope this clarifies the issue. I am sorry if I am 'repeating' any replies
said - but I am sending this mail as I go through my mail.

Regards,
Ali

P.S. If its not obvious I am back in Cairo and swamped with mail - so please
give me a few days