Bug 33352

Summary: XFCE programs show no help in minimal installation (Xfce ISO); needs yelp.
Product: Mageia Reporter: Dan Fandrich <dan>
Component: InstallerAssignee: All Packagers <pkg-bugs>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: Normal CC: fri, mageia
Version: CauldronKeywords: IN_ERRATA9
Target Milestone: Mageia 10   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard: MGA9TOO
Source RPM: task-xfce-4.18-1.mga9.src.rpm CVE:
Status comment:

Description Dan Fandrich 2024-07-02 00:07:09 CEST
Description of problem:
Choosing "Help" in programs installed in a minimal XFCE install (e.g. atril, engrampa) does absolutely nothing; no help is displayed and the click is silently ignored. However, help files for these programs are available in /usr/share/help/C/ and they ought to be displayed.

Choosing Help in a Gnome application (e.g. sysprof) causes "Could not show link. The specified location is not supported". 

Neither yelp nor khelpcenter was installed in this (mostly) default installation, so there is probably simply no application available to show help. Unless I missed something and XFCE supplies its own application (that is not working), likely yelp should be installed in a minimal XFCE installation. After installing yelp manually, help in all the programs mentioned above works fine.

Note that this was a task-xfce-minimal installation, so maybe leaving out yelp was deliberate. If so, then there should probably be a shim installed in place of gnome-help to direct the user to install to install gnome-help for help. Having the user's help request silently ignored is rather unfriendly. Since xmessage seems to be installed already, installing a one-line shell script that runs "xmessage 'Install gnome-help for help'" as an alternative for gnome-help, that gets replaced if gnome-help is installed, should work. Or, just install yelp since it's only 2.6 MB large.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
task-xfce-minimal-4.18-1.mga9.src.rpm

How reproducible:
Likely any bare-bones XFCE installation will show this.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install XFCE on a new system.
2. Try "Help" in several programs like the ones above.
3. Note the lack of help being displayed.

Note that many XFCE programs will launch Firefox and display a remote help page with information on a program (e.g.  mousepad, deluge) because help files aren't  packaged with the application (so there's nothing local to display).

See also #33339.
Comment 1 Lewis Smith 2024-07-03 22:01:58 CEST
Thank you for the report. Yes, it does look simply that 'yelp' should be in the Xfce ISO.
> After installing yelp manually, help in all the programs mentioned above
> works fine
I have changed this to Cauldron for next release, since the M9 ISOs cannot now be altered. It need an ERRATA for Mageia 9.

Version: 9 => Cauldron
CC: (none) => fri, mageia
Assignee: bugsquad => pkg-bugs
Whiteboard: (none) => MGA9TOO
Component: RPM Packages => Installer
Keywords: (none) => FOR_ERRATA9
Summary: XFCE programs show no help in minimal installation => XFCE programs show no help in minimal installation (Xfce ISO); needs yelp.

Comment 2 Morgan Leijström 2024-07-04 00:12:05 CEST
Added to end of
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_9_Errata#Various

Keywords: FOR_ERRATA9 => IN_ERRATA9
Target Milestone: --- => Mageia 10

Comment 3 Martin Whitaker 2024-07-04 10:00:41 CEST
Note this is not a bug in the installer. yelp either needs to be added to the requires of packages that need it, or to task-xfce-minimal if it is considered to be something that should always be installed on an Xfce system, or to a suitable category in meta-task/rpmsrate if it is considered to be something that should be installed by default.

At the moment we have an incomplete mixture of meta-tasks and individual packages requiring it:

% urpmq --whatrequires yelp | sort -u
aisleriot
five-or-more
four-in-a-row
gnome-chess
gnome-klotski
gnome-mahjongg
gnome-mines
gnome-nibbles
gnome-robots
gnome-sudoku
gnome-taquin
gnome-tetravex
gnucash
iagno
lib64yelp0
libyelp0
lightsoff
lybniz
mate-desktop
moserial
quadrapassel
simple-scan
sparkleshare
swell-foop
tali
task-gnome-minimal
task-mate-minimal

and it is not mentioned in rpmsrate.