how to view newly processed help files

[David Bryant]

On Wednesday, October 27, 2021 4:31:11 PM CDT Jack Ostroff wrote:
> Can anyone suggest where to start looking for relevant config
> differences between users?

I haven't yet figured out the configuration angle. But I did a little bit of reverse 
engineering, and I have figured out how to make khelpcenter play nice with a test version 
of a Handbook. Here's what I did.

-- The README.metadata file in the khelpcenter source code explains how the "Application 
Manuals" section of the table of contents is organized. Briefly, there is a "desktop" file for 
each application program in the system. Khelpcenter uses that metadata to build the list 
of application manuals.

-- On Gentoo, at least, the relevant .desktop files are found in /usr/share/applications/. 
KDE apps are all called org.kde.applicationname.desktop.

-- I created a dummy desktop file "org.kde.testing.desktop" in the /usr/share/applications/ 
directory. A copy of that file is attached to this message. Some of the lines in that file may 
be unnecessary. This version works for me. Oh -- I see that "Testing" now shows up on the 
KDE start menu. I may be able to clean up the .desktop file to avoid that. Not sure if that 
can be done.

-- I also created a new "Testing" directory in /usr/share/help/en/. This is where a working 
copy of the new documentation files will go.

-- In the working directory where I'm editing a new Handbook I entered these commands:

meinproc5 --check --cache index.cache index.docbook
bzip2 index.cache

This generated a compressed html file named "index.cache.bz2".

-- Finally, I copied everything from my working directory on ~/ to /usr/share/help/en/
Testing/.

After all this was done I started khelpcenter from the KDE start menu, and selected 
"Testing" from the "System" category. (In the .desktop file, attached, note the two lines "X-
DocPath=Testing/index.html" and "Categories=Qt;KDE;System;".) Voila! My modified 
version of KOrganizer documentation appeared. All the links work. Etc. I suppose I can 
switch from using a working directory on ~/ and run meinproc5 directly against my root 
device. I haven't actually tried that, yet. It might create ownership problems later, when I 
run git push.

I thought I might be able to use a symlink instead of copying everything into the /usr/
share/help/en/Testing/ directory. But I couldn't get that to work.

Jack, I hope this is helpful. A bit cumbersome, but it works.
-- 
David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas
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