Installing the Gimp help file?

[Henry]

All items on the Gimp help menu just say help not installed. I like this program a lot and would like to use the context sensitive help. (I already got the separate pdf file, but it's not the same;-) Preferences also give you a choice of using the "help browser" or the "web browser." Neither work for me in the help menu.

I have downloaded and decompressed gimp-help-2-0.11in the root directory . Where should I put it? How do I make it work? Hope I don't have to compile ;-) Same for Abiword. I understand the rationale for excluding help files in a small distro, but I hope such things can be added by the ordinary user. It would be good to be able to use a squash file outside pup_save.2fs.

Henry

[muggins]

henry, did you see this link here? this is for the english language help for gimp & it's 4M+

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=13929

all the files are extracted to /usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en

also, to work with F1 in gimp, it needs a file gimp-help.xml .

[muggins]

OK,

i downloaded the gimp help, & copied it to /usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en , but it didn't work using gimp's own browser, as it complained about missing gimp help browser plugin. i then downloaded this plugin from here:

http://dir.filewatcher.com/d/Debian/i38 ... 42542.html

and when i extract the plugin to /usr/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins ,then this works fine, except that the extracted help is over 6Mbytes.

so instead i changed the gimp help preferences to use a browser, used webpack on the help files to reduce it to about 4.5M, then made a makeself self-extracting executable of the help docs, using dillo as the browser, then made this self executable as the "browser" for gimp.

doing this reduced disk usage from 6M+ to 600k+ . the only proviso is that gimp still needs one file, gimp-help.xml, to be located in /usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en/

[Henry]

Thanks very much, Muggins,

I'm a bit obtuse on these things, and do appreciate your spelling them out for me.

Googling, I see that this problem in Gimp 2 has dedeviled not only me but countless others in both the windows and linux versions. Amazing.

Henry

[muggins]

yes, i'm familiar with people having problems with the gimp help. the funny thing is that gimp needs the file, gimp-help.xml, yet you can google for the help, then dload it, and find that it's missing that particular file.

if you want i could email you the 600kbyte help file, which you just extract to
/usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en/ , then adjust the gimp preferences to use this as the help.
it's just a bit big for the forum limit on attachments, of 500kbytes.

(alternatively i could split it, with a file splitter, into two segments under 500k, then you just need to join the two parts).

[Henry]

That would be great, thanks!

Just email the whole thing to

books@henrystrobel.com

Henry

[muggins]

i've just uploaded it to the forum here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14946

just as an aside, i often download whole html documents, using httrack, then compress them as much as possible using webpack, then finally create a self-extracting document, sort of like an ebook, using Stephane Peter's makeself utility. This can often get a tenfold reduction in the total document file structure.

usually with makeself i use the --gzip option, rather than --bzip2, as in virtually everything i've tried, strangely, gzip gives more compressed archives. (although i know on the commandline, using them directly, the reverse is the case).

but trying again with the gimp-docs, using makeself with bzip2 this time reduced it by another 200kbytes!

[Henry]

OK, I downloaded it and extracted it into /

I Roxed to /usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en/docs and confirmed it was there. I clicked on docs and dillo opened the help file. Good.

I closed dillo and started the Gimp. Selected File, Preferences, Help Systems, Helpbrowser as web browser.
What should go into the "web browser to use" field?

You say then to make the path point to:
/usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en/docs

You lost me here - I tried entering that path into the field, tried entering dillo %s, or opera %s. F1 still says help not installed.

Henry

[muggins]

when you do the file->preferences->help system, select web browser, then just copy this:

/usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en/docs & paste it into the field titled Web browser to use

or just click on the 3 dots at the end, then go to the directory /usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en & select docs . the file docs itself is being used as the "browser", even though it's actually using dillo.

[Henry]

Well, thanks, but,

That's exactly what I did first, as reported. Nothing.

But - where are the three dots - you seem to indicate they're in this field? I have none. (Yes, I'm familiar with the dots to change directories elsewhere.) Maybe our programs are different? I have the newer Gimp 2.3.10.

Henry

[muggins]

OK,

i'm only up to version 2.2.11 . i'm just dloading 2.3.10 , then, if it works with my libraries, i'll have a look at what's changed & why the method doesn't work.

[muggins]

OK,

i downloaded gimp version 2.3.10 and see that it's installing files in a different location. so the above will work with gimp 2.2.11, but not with 2.3.10.

instead the two files, docs & gimp-help.xml, have to be extracted to :

/root/my-roxapps/gimp_cvs/share/gimp/2.0/help/en , then the preferences

Web browser to use: changed to:

/root/my-roxapps/gimp_cvs/share/gimp/2.0/help/en/docs

[Nathan F]

I'd like to point out that this whole situation exists for two reasons, both of which I consider basic flaws in GImp. First, the included help browser is based on gtkhtml, which is so firmly gnome-centric that we can't ship it in Puppy because of the added bloat. The second is that Gimp and Gimp-help are two separate source packages, while they should probably be one.

I'm grateful for the ideas on how to shrink this package down, which I will probably put into action in my Gimp packages sometime soon.

Nathan

[muggins]

nathan,

i also had a look at integrating abiword help in a similar way, but it's configuration seems even kludgier.

Setting Default Web Browser

AbiWord does not use the Gnome specified default browser.

Rather it first looks for the environmental variable "BROWSER". If the program name described by the environmental variable does not exist, then it tries to run browsers in the following order:

1. konquerer
2. mozilla
3. netscape
4. kdehelp
5. lynx in an xterm

[Nathan F]

Well that looks like it would miss on every take. They really need to update that list for the browsers people are really using these days. I thin a better list would go something like:
firefox
seamonkey
opera
dillo
lynx in a terminal
elinks in a terminal
Hardly anyone uses netscape anymore, at least on *nix, and mozilla is quite deprecated as well. Konqueror or Epiphany should be launched automatically by KDE or Gnome services, and Abiword should respect that if it isn't doing so now.

A quicky solution in Puppy would be to export the BROWSER variable before launching Abiword, by adding a line into /etc/profile just after the exporting of the DEFAULTBROWSER variable, like this. (the addition is the last line)

Code: Select all

DEFAULTBROWSER="`cat /usr/local/bin/defaultbrowser | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 2 -d " "`"
DEFAULTDRAW="`cat /usr/local/bin/defaultdraw  | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 2 -d " "`"
DEFAULTHTMLEDITOR="`cat /usr/local/bin/defaulthtmleditor  | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 2 -d " "`"
DEFAULTMEDIAPLAYER="`cat /usr/local/bin/defaultmediaplayer  | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 2 -d " "`"
DEFAULTPAINT="`cat /usr/local/bin/defaultpaint  | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 2 -d " "`"
DEFAULTSPREADSHEET="`cat /usr/local/bin/defaultspreadsheet  | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 2 -d " "`"
DEFAULTTEXTEDITOR="`cat /usr/local/bin/defaulttexteditor  | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 2 -d " "`"
DEFAULTWORDPROCESSOR="`cat /usr/local/bin/defaultwordprocessor  | tail -n 1 | tr -s " " | cut -f 2 -d " "`"
export DEFAULTBROWSER DEFAULTDRAW DEFAULTHTMLEDITOR DEFAULTMEDIAPLAYER DEFAULTPAINT DEFAULTSPREADSHEET DEFAULTTEXTEDITOR DEFAULTWORDPROCESSOR
export BROWSER=$DEFAULTBROWSER

Hopefully that would work, by setting the BROWSER variable to match the DEFAULTBROWSER variable.

It could also be set in the shell just before launching Abiword, or with a wrapper script that sets that variable then launches the program.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
export BROWSER=$DEFAULTBROWSER
exec abiword "$@"

Hope that helps a bit.

Nathan

[muggins]

nathan,

this looks interesting...haven't tried it yet but, as someone coming from an abacus cum DOS background, when you do the

export BROWSER=$DEFAULTBROWSER

,
is this only valid for the time that abiword is open, or does it change the default setting?


update: i had a quick look, and while it would be easy to include the "export..." in a start up script, unfortunately i can't see any easy way to get abiword to use it. a lot of abiword configuration seems to be xml based, but i can't see anything where i can set it to blahblahblah. it's funny how, with rox's mime setup, i can open up a text file with gxine, or vice versa, yet abi's settings seem set in stone!

[GuestToo]

you can put that line in the defaultbrowser script, like this:

#!/bin/sh
export BROWSER=$DEFAULTBROWSER
exec abiword "$@"

right click the desktop icon to edit the default browser script

or you could put the line in /etc/profile.local

[Nathan F]

is this only valid for the time that abiword is open, or does it change the default setting?

You aren't changing the default setting, you are adding another environmetn variable. The DEFAULTBROWSER variable will still be set as normal, and now you will have basically a copy of it under the name BROWSER.

Nathan