[Bf-committers] url handlers / help-system / *nix

[John K. Walton]

considering there is a fair amount of incompatibility amoungst broswers
between the various blender supported platforms, i'm suprised that an HTML
based help system is even under discussion. for instance, on irix, mozilla
is such a pig it's barely usable, and the latest netscape is 4.8. i have
to go to a windows PC to even broswe the blender site (sorry guys. it
looks great, but it's not compatibile). and while the acceptable response
is get "a modern broswer" for things like web browsering is fairgame,
basing, a help system with the same charactaristics is not.

in the spirit of not complaining unless suggesting a possible solution. IF
an HTML based help system is desired, it must conform to the MINIMUM
supported platform in a reasonable fashion. example: simple text with
trivial image (JPG) placement using tables.

of course when i say HTML i mean the whole gamut: from XML to PNG 

thanks!
john

On Thu, 6 May 2004, Daniel Fairhead wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I've been thinking and looking into adding documentation links from the
> help menu. A very simple project which I should be able to do :-)
> 
> All it has to do is launch the default browser at either an online URL, or a
> html file on the system.
> 
> As far as I have done so far, it is very easy on windows (two/three lines (besides
> the blender events/menu code)). 
> 
> Unfortunatly, other OSes (*NIX) don't have an official standard way of knowing
> what the default browser is.
> 
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/
> 
> seems like a Good Solution, using a $BROWSER environment variable and then 
> needs only 3 lines again. I do not know how many distros/systems support this by default
> though.
> 
> I have also found a way of finding out the gnome http URL handler using gconf. The
> code to do this though is quite ugly and large (20+ lines). I could also write some 
> semi-smart code which goes searching in common places for common browsers, and call 
> them... but this is also very in-elegant.
> 
> I could also add a user-pref for which browser, but this seems far far over the top,
> ugly, and silly. I really dislike this though.
> 
> So, should I just do the $BROWSER one (my prefered) and if $BROWSER isn't set 
> pop up a message saying "please set your $BROWSER variable for Help to work...", 
> or should I write loads of ugly hacky code to try and find clever defaults to use
> if $BROWSER isn't set?
> 
> Sorry if this seems trivial...
> 
> Dan
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