Re: [gthumb-list] Does HELP actually work, anywhere, for anyone?

["Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg tristatelogic com>]

In message <4FAB8C18 1000400 avtechpulse com>, you wrote:

> > There seems to be some attempt to invoke yelp as if there had been some
> > specification for it somewhere that was written like:
> >
> >      yelp %f
>
>
> On my system, /usr/share/applications/gnome-yelp.desktop has the line:
>
> Exec=yelp %u
>
> %u specifies a URL, not a file.

Yessir indeed!

Just a couple of hours ago, after stumbling around down deep in the code
a bit more, I finally figured out for myself that that extra %u was
indeed exactly and precisely what was missing.  So I just stuck that
in there and sure enough, everything started to work right at last.

Apparently, this was a small but significant chance that was made to a
file called yelp.desktop.in.in (in the yelp distributions) some time
between versions 2.91.8 and 2.91.9.  (17-Dec-2010 -> 23-Dec-2010.)

Unortunately for me, and for every other user of GNOME tools on FreeBSD,
the find fellows who were supposed to have been keeping this kind of
stuff at least vaguely up-to-date have fallen down on the job rather
badly, it seems, and even though the official Gnome yelp sources have
progressed all the way up to version 3.4.1, the current official
FreeBSD port of yelp is still stuck way back at v2.30.2... which
really is quite long in the tooth now, and which explains why my own
local yelp.desktop file didn't contain a %u on the Exec= line until
I added on, just a couple of hours ago.

I think that I shall have a chat with the maintainer(s) of the FreeBSD
port of yelp, during which I may perhaps express some displeasure at
their having cost me quite a bit of lost time due to their prolonged
failure to update.

> Does running "yelp ghelp:gthumb" from the command line work for you?

Yes, it is all good now.  I can get to the application-specific help pages
for gthumb and evince and braceros, either by invoking yelp from the
command line, just as you've shown, _or_ (now) via Help->Contents from
within these applications themselves.


Regards,
rfg