XFCE documentation

nrickert · April 22, 2011, 2:20am

When I click on “HELP” in some of the XFCE settings applets, I get an error.

It looks as if the software is looking for the help under “/usr/share/doc/xfce-utils/” whereas the documentation is really stored under “/usr/share/doc/packages/xfce-utils/”.

I can add a symlink as a workaround. But before I do that, I thought I should ask whether there is a configuration file somewhere that allows setting the documentation path.

Thanks.

hcvv · April 22, 2011, 11:19am

Looks like a bug IMHO. Somewhere this setting (to use the /packages in the path) is taken (by the openSUSE distributors?) but it is not adhered to by all XFCE applications.

You could start filing a bug at openSUSE:Submitting bug reports - openSUSE. But when my idea about some XFCE apps do and some don’t is correct, going to the XFCE site might also b usefull.

nrickert · April 22, 2011, 6:42pm

Thanks for the suggestion.

It turns out that this has already been reported as bug 688095. It is listed as fixed upstream.

hcvv · April 22, 2011, 6:45pm

You are welcome. Again something that will be solved in the near future

please_try_again · April 28, 2011, 11:12am

Set the variable HELP_DIR in /usr/bin/xfhelp4 to /usr/share/doc/packages instead of /usr/share/doc.

nrickert · April 28, 2011, 1:15pm

Thanks. Much appreciated.

So, to test the change, I went into XFCE settings manager, clicked on “Calendar” and then clicked “Help”.

I got: “Firefox can’t find the file at /usr/share/orage/doc/C/orage.html#orage-preferences-window”

LOL.

However, your suggested change does fix most of the help in XFCE.

please_try_again · April 28, 2011, 2:36pm

Did that work before you changed the path?

Just checked. It works fine for me. But it opens the file /usr/share/orage/doc/C/orage.html in the browser. If I add ‘#orage-preferences-window’ manually, it loads that page.

nrickert · April 28, 2011, 3:40pm

I didn’t try it before, and I doubt that it worked.

It might be something funky in firefox causing that problem. As far as I know, the “#orage-preferences-window” is supposed to identify a location within the file, rather than be part of the file name.

please_try_again · April 29, 2011, 3:26am

Yes that’s what it is too. The command behind the help button in calendar preferences is replacing “#” by its ASCII value (0x23) and send that to the default browser. I don’t believe it should encode the URL like this. As a consequence the browser looks for this URL “/usr/share/orage/doc/C/orage.html%23orage-preferences-window” and doesn’t find it, but it does succesfully jump to the anchor. It’s not a firefox problem.

nrickert · April 29, 2011, 4:56am

Yes, I agree that the “%23” looks wrong. My understanding is that the percent encoding overrides the special meaning of “#” and treats it instead as an ordinary character.