[Wine] CHM help not working

L. Rahyen research at science.su
Thu Oct 25 03:36:43 CDT 2007


On Thursday October 25 2007 06:50, James Hawkins wrote:
> On 10/25/07, L. Rahyen <research at science.su> wrote:
> > On Thursday October 25 2007 04:04, Jeffrey Cobb wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2007-10-25 at 16:42 +1300, Ross Levis wrote:
> > > > I'm a Windows (non C++) software developer and I'm wanting my
> > > > software to run under Wine as best as possible.  My app uses CHM help
> > > > files which are displayed in Windows when pressing F1 or clicking
> > > > Help on the menu, but it does not work under Wine on Linux.  It does
> > > > absolutely nothing.
> > > >
> > > > Is see there are CHM viewers available but Wine does not seem to use
> > > > them. Any suggestions?
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Ross.
> > >
> > > I've run into the same problem... simply put I can't install Visual
> > > Basic Pro in WINE.  So I had to opt for VMWARE and run VB in a Windows
> > > XP sandbox.  You can check it out here:  www.vmware.com
> > >
> > > You'll wanna take interest in vmplayer for Linux.  It's what I use.  I
> > > have to wait a bit for the player to come up but it's great for the
> > > apps I can't use in WINE.
> > >
> > > Take Care,
> > > Jeff
> >
> >         I think VirtualBox (its free!), especially with Seamless Mode
> > turned on, is good alternative to VMWare and much better than VMPlayer.
> > See
> > http://www.virtualbox.org/ .
> >         But hey, this has nothing to do with WINE! And with CHM files
> > too... It is much simpler to run CHM-viewer than virtual machine. And of
> > course most of real-world users will not use virtual machines at all. So
> > if you are developer and want to see your application working on Linux
> > for users (not just you) you can use WINE or port it natively (sometimes
> > very hard especially if your are using non-standard languages or
> > non-standard language features; by saying "standard" here I mean GCC). So
> > in many cases WINE is the only choice.
> >         Let's face it: we really need someone who can and want implement
> > better support for help files in WINE. Currently it is far from perfect.
> > Not sure should be it proposed for 1.0 release or not. This can delay 1.0
> > release a lot if no one will working on it! Therefore there is no point
> > to make it 1.0 release requirement: just because there isn't enough
> > people who want to work on it! Don't get me wrong! There is some people
> > who did a lot of work for better help support in WINE. But a lot of work
> > still should be done to make it really good in all (or at least most)
> > cases.
> >         You may ask: "Why? Many users use help in Windows applications!".
> > Yes, this is correct. But:
> >
> >         1) Most developers either havn't enough time to work on this
> > issue or simply think that there is more important tasks (and this is
> > true, good help support isn't high priority task).
> >         2) There is very simple workarounds. Instead of viewing help
> > files directly user can run external viewer. In case of CHM kchmviewer
> > should work well. This isn't perfect solution of course: even worse, it
> > isn't solution at all, it is just an workaround.
> >         3) Situation isn't very bad. In many programs help works
> > perfectly! For example, HTML help in Photoshop CS. However, in many other
> > programs it still doesn't work or work very bad (depending on what format
> > and its features the application in question uses) and this is exactly
> > the problem.
> >
> >         What's the conclusion? We need someone who can and want
> > (actively) to work on this part of WINE to make it better. And this isn't
> > one-day project, this may took weeks or months of work.
>
> No it won't.  HTML Help (hhctrl.ocx) is implemented enough so that you
> can view chm files.  The right advice is to tell Ross to open a bug
> report for this problem.  Most developers don't scour the wine-users
> mailing list searching for bugs to fix, and really, this isn't the
> place to discuss problems like this.

	Please note I didn't say that WINE cannot view chm files! I just did said 
that in many cases help doesn't work or work very bad (depending on the 
format and used features) and this is exactly the problem I'm talking about.
	And yes, you are right, I forgot my usual advice to open bug report! I give 
this advice many times each day at wine-users: each new person needs it. But 
somehow I forgot about it in this case...



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