gnochm - A CHM file viewer for Gnome
Version 0.9.11
Copyright (C) 2003-2007 Rubens Ramos <rubensr@users.sourceforge.net>
Please report bugs or suggestions for improvements to the above
address or follow the instructions at:
http://gnochm.sourceforge.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
Gnochm is a CHM file viewer for Gnome systems. Features are:
* Support for external ms-its links
* Full text search support
* Bookmarks
* Configurable support for HTTP links
* Integrated with Gnome2:
- Registers itself to open CHM files (freedesktop and older scheme).
- Accepts Drag-n-Drop from Nautilus.
- Uses Gnome help system.
- Preferences stored in GConf.
- Uses popt to parse command line parameters
- Gnome session support
* Support for multiple languages
(cs,de,el,es,fr,hu,it,ja,pl,pt_BR,ru,sv,tr,zh_CN,zh_TW)
* Support to open multiple files at once
* Displays HTML page source
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REQUIREMENTS
- PyCHM (or python-chm) (>= 0.8.4)
- Python (>= 2.2.1)
Also, python must have gettext and locale modules
- pygtk2 (>= 1.99.12)
- pygtk2-libglade (>= 1.99.12)
- gnome-python2 (>= 1.99.11)
- gnome-python2-gtkhtml2 (>= 1.99.11)
- gnome-python2-gconf (>= 1.99.11)
- gnome-python2-bonobo (>= 1.99.11)
- Optional shared-mime-info from www.freedesktop.org
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INSTALLING
* From source:
First things first - if you want to be able to access the user's
guide from Yelp (the Gnome help system), you need to know where
your scrollkeeper content list files are located. To do this, I
did:
$ locate scrollkeeper_cl | grep C
And you should see at least one entry. In RedHat 8, the base
directory used by scrollkeeper for the files is '/var/lib'.
Second: if you want to see an entry for gnochm (at least in
redhat) in the main panel menu, you will also need to use 'prefix'
in your configuration parameters (see below).
So, if you want a new entry for gnochm in the menu, and if you
also want to be able to see gnochm documentation from the Yelp,
then you can type something like this (this is what I do on my
system, Fedora Core 2):
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var/lib
But if you don't care about it, you can just do:
$ ./configure
And finally, to build and install gnochm:
$ make
$ su root
<enter root password>
$ make install
For more specific information about the 'configure' script, refer to
the INSTALL file included in this package.
* Installing from source without root access
Because gnochm uses gconf to store user preferences, you need to
configure it to install its data files in your local directory.
So first of all, check that gconf is globally configured to search
in users directories for data by making sure the file
/etc/gconf/2/path
has references to $(HOME) in it. If it doesnt, then you need to ask
your systems admin to update this file for you before you can proceed
with the installation.
With the gconf stuff sorted out, you will need to use "configure"
in a way similar to this:
./configure --prefix=/home/<username>/<destination>
--localstatedir=/home/<username>/<destination>/lib
--with-gconf-source="xml::/home/<username>/.gconf"
--with-gconf-schema-file-dir=/home/<username>/.gconf
Just remember to substitute <username> with your username and
<destination> with the directory where the gnochm binary, and
all other configuration files will be installed. The
"--localstatedir" option is used to store the documentation file,
so you will probably need to make sure scrollkeeper is able to
find files there (so you may need to check the scrollkeeper
documentation on how to do it - which again may require root
access).
* Binary RPMs
If you already have an older version of gnochm installed, it would
be good to get rid of it first:
$ rpm -e gnochm
To install the gnochm RPM, download the file, and then type:
$ rpm -i gnochm-X.X.X.yyy.rpm
* Source RPMs
$ rpm -i gnochm-X.X.X.src.rpm
$ rpmbuild -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/gnochm.spec
$ rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/gnochm-X.X.X.yyy.rpm
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TROUBLESHOOTING
* Chinese characters are not displayed properly!
There are two issues are involved in this problem, but first, make sure
you run gnochm with the "-d" flag and have a look in ~/.gnochm/gnochm.log
to see that at least one of the "encoding" or "lcid" in your file are
correct. Some dodgy chms do not have proper encodings in them.
If the encoding is correct, then:
1) The contents pane does not show the proper characters
- Try installing the cjkpython support for Chinese located in
http://cjkpython.i18n.org.
2) The HTML window shows some rubbish!
- This problem seems to be in the gtkhtml2 widget, and bug report
#154428 has been raised to fix this.
* TypeError: color_parse() argument 1 must be string, not None
Note that some people indicated that logging out/in or even
rebooting their computer solved their problem, so it's a good
idea to try that before following the instructions below.
The symptoms of this problem are that after installation, root
can run GnoCHM, but other users get something similar to the
above error. This is a problem with gconf that happens when
the root user has a certain umask. You can verify if this is
the case by checking the permissions on
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/apps/gnochm
The directory above should have permissions to read/execute for
all users.
To solve this issue:
1. Uninstall gnochm
2. Make sure the file
/etc/gconf/schemas/gnochm.schema
does not exist. Delete it if necessary.
3. Make sure the directory
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/apps/gnochm
does not exist. Delete it if necessary.
4. Logged as root, update your umask:
umask 0022
5. Do not log out yet. Reinstall gnochm
Things should work after this. This problem has been sent to the
GConf team, and the bug report #145041 has been raised on
http://bugzilla.gnome.org
* GnoCHM crashes every time I follow a HTML link!
This is a bug in gtkhtml2 (libtgkhtml2 to be more precise), and
is present since around 2.4.0 (2.0.1 is known to work). At the time
of writing (19 apr 2004) this bug HAS JUST BEEN FIXED in CVS, and will
be part of a future release of gtkhtml2. For more details, check
bug #135489 in http://bugzilla.gnome.org. So you can either try the CVS
code, use the patch attached to the bug report, or get a version of
gtkhtml2 >= 2.6.1.
Gtkhtml2 sources are available at the Gnome ftp site:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/libgtkhtml
* ImportError: could not import bonobo.ui
This occurs when gnome-python has not been compiled with all of the
modules that gnochm needs. Some of the modules (notably the one above)
in gnome-python require that the orbit bindings for python are installed.
They are called pyorbit now, and older versions are called orbit-python.
* ImportError: could not import <name>
Gnochm (actually python) could not find the modules it needs to
run. Modules can be installed in a variety of places. One way to
see where python looks for modules is by doing:
$ python
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path
This last command will print a list of directories, and your module
should be in one of them. If it isn't, then you can add more
directories to the search path by setting the environment variable
PYTHONPATH:
In a csh-like shell:
$ setenv PYTHONPATH /path/to/some/files:$PYTHONPATH
or, in a sh-like shell:
$ export PYTHONPATH=/path/to/some/files:$PYTHONPATH
* Arghhh! something else going wrong!
In certain cases, tweaking the gnochm configuration directly may
help. For the adventurous/experienced people out there, it is possible to
configure gnochm manually by using gconf-editor:
1. open gconf-editor (from the command-line, usually)
2. Navigate to /apps/gnochm/preferences
3. All gnochm preferences are stored here.
The configuration stuff is located in ~/.gnochm, so if you think
something is wrong with the configuration, this is the directory
to look at.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TECHNICAL DETAILS
GnoCHM is implemented in Python, using the PyGTk2 and the Python-Gnome
bindings. It is supposed to be highly integrated with Gnome2.
GnoCHM depends on PyCHM, a package that provides python wrappers to
the CHMLIB written by Jed Wing.
If you intend to hack this code, you probably want to look into
gnochm.py.in, which contains the 'real' implementation.
The glade files are in the 'glade' directory, and the manuals are
in the 'help' directory. The 'po' directory contains the i18n
messages, and the 'data' directory contains miscellaneous system
configuration files that are installed with the tool.
GnoCHM uses python gettext and some other functions in gtk.glade to
allow i18n. The translatable strings are saved in the '.c' files in
the 'glade' directory.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
KNOWN BUGS
* Follow anchors properly (shlv.chm)
Sometimes, when an anchor is clicked, gtkhtml2 refuses to jump to
it; This is apparently a GtkHTML2 bug, and it is in bugzilla.
* Funny characters appear in msconfig.chm (and others?)
I have no idea why this happens.
* mmwhiteb.chm -> fail to open some gif files (weird directory).
There is some weird way the search path is used in some files.
* Tooltips do not appear for toolbar
This is a bug in old versions of libglade - but it works on
Fedora Core 2.
* Menu and Toolbar detach option cannot be configured via
the system configuration tool!
Yes - and that is because libglade is not registering the dock
items to listen to the desktop gconf values - I wrote most of the
code in python, but the bindings I am using lack one of the APIs
from bonobodockitem (it is private) to change the dock item
behaviour.
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ENHANCEMENTS
Things I would like to improve in gnochm:
* Save Geometry
There are two issues here. The first is saving the application state
between sessions. There is support for this in Gnome and in PyGTK now,
but adding this would make future versions of gnochm unusable in older
versions of pygtk...so I am not sure how unhappy users would become...
The second issue is saving the application state while in a session.
There is no support for this in gnome, and all of the information I
could find says that this should be done automatically by the window
manager, and not by the application. However, I could not make this
work using metacity yet. If you know how to do this properly, let me know.
* Searching in the index tab tree view could be improved - there are
entries that should not be there sometimes (AddRef()...) and because
it is setup as a TreeView, searching is done in ALL items, not only
in the main index ones.
* Bookmarks could be better - once the UI moves to a new page, the entry
in the bookmarks tab could be filled with the current page title. This
has to be obtained somehow using one of those index files in the CHM
archive, it would require some changes to PyCHM too.
* Support Gtkhtml2 when following HTTP links
Use gtkhtml2 when HTTP links are clicked. This adds some complexity
to the code that handles the links.
* Notifications of time-consuming activities could be better
When opening a large file, or searching through a large set of matches,
things take a while. Using a progress bar could be a good idea. Right
now, all I do is disable events, show "loading" or "searching, please
wait" and hope for the best.
* Printing CHM files
This is not supported by the gtkhtml2 widget yet.
* Handle "mailto" links properly (i.e. send email)
Hmmm - really superfluous
* Implement find (i.e. search for text in the page)
This would be really nice, but first I need to know how to search
for text in the gtkhtml2 widget.
* Handle "merge" tags properly in topics file
Some of the CHM files I tested required this - when this tag is used
it is expected that the contents tree will be merged with another
file's contents tree.
* Transform it into a Nautilus viewer
Not sure if this would be really useful.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Icons/Logo by Kostia <pan1@takas.lt>
Belarusian translation by Ihar Hrachyshka
Chinese translation by Carlos Liu
Czech translation by Zbynek Mrkvicka
German translation by Daniel Schindler.
Greek translation by Antonis Papaderos
Hungarian translation by Garami Gábor
Italian translation and patches by Alessandro Gatti
Japanese translation by Tadashi Jokagi
Polish translation by MichaÅ Kastelik
Portuguese (BR) updates by Alan Kelon
Russian translation by Alexandre Prokoudine, Vitaly Lipatov, Basil Shubin
Spanish translation by Antonio Garcia Marin
Swedish translation by Daniel Nylander
Turkish translation by Sertac O. YILDIZ
Traditional Chinese Taiwan by Chao, Wei-Lun
Vietnamese by Huttic
Mime patch by Dag Wieers and Mariusz Smykula
Thanks to:
* James Henstrige - for writing the python bindings
* Christian Reis - for maintaining the PyGTK FAQ/Web site
* Jed Wing - for developing CHMLIB
* Pabs - for the excellent CHM documentation
* People at #pygtk - Thanks for the help, guys!
* Padraig O'Briain - for helping with the gtkhtml2 problem
Patches, bug reports and help testing:
Paolo Borelli, David Breakey, Ed Catmur, Joseph Churchill,
Ahmed El-Mahmoudy, Zoltan Filyo, Alessandro Gatti, Ow Mun Heng,
Raphael Higino, Jan Horacek, Ismael Juma, Alan Kelon, Carlos Liu,
Eugenia Loli-Queru, Darius Mazeika, Jiri Pejchal, Renato Ramonda,
Jody Ricker, Pablo Rodriguez, Fabio Silva, JD Smith, Alex Tarkovsky,
Scott Tsai, Cheuksan Edward Wang, Glenn Washburn, Ralgh Young, Nan Zou
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LICENSE
gnochm is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
$Id: README,v 1.52 2007/09/15 12:20:23 rubensr Exp $
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