getting windows help files to display

[Bart Symons]

F. James Rohlf wrote:

> I can run my programs with no problems but the help files do not display.
> Is there some trick?
> 
> I am running RH 7.2 with wine installed using the rpm that came with it.
> 
> Thanks.

I don't know about the Wine rpm included with RH but with Wine's own set of 
source files there is a directory called "programs". This directory 
contains a whole set of replacements for some typical Windows applications 
like Control Panel, Notepad and even Winhelp. This application can display 
.hlp files. If the software you're using uses .htm instead than you can 
probably view them with your Linux/Unix web browser. 

So, regarding the fake Winhelp, it comes as a Unix/linux shared object 
called winhelp.so. To invoke it from the Linux command prompt you put this 
.so file together with a symbolic link to the wine executable in one 
directory. The symbolic link has to refer to the Wine executable called 
"wine".

To create the symbolic link go into the directory where you copied 
winhelp.so and type "ln -s <path to Wine bin>/wine winhelp". When you try 
to run "winhelp" then automatically wine will run the .so file with the 
same name from the same directory. 

I would suggest you first check if RH's Wine includes winhelp or not.
Do this with "rpm -qlp <name of the rpm file>.rpm | grep winhelp" 
or with "rpm -ql <name of the rpm file> | grep winhelp".
If it contains winhelp.so then you'll see the directory where it's located. 
It probably also contains the symbolic link then.
Alternatevile you can do an exhaustive search in your file system for 
filenames with "winhelp".

If you don't find winhelp on your PC then you can still download and 
compile it yourself. This is quite easy.
Download a .tar.gz from the Wine web site (www.winehq.com). Untar it into a 
new directory, go into the main directory and enter:
"./configure" and then "make". Then go into the "programs/winhelp" 
directory and type "make". Then you should find a winhelp.so file. Copy 
this file somewhere in your fake Windows directory structure, create the 
symbolic link as explained above and try to run "winhelp", then select a 
.hlp file. When all this is done you may delete the directory you untarred 
Wine into.