Arch Linux

za3af

Member

Registered: 2014-08-29

Posts: 3

Help feature broken in Xfce

Hello!

Hoping that one of the Xfce / Archlinux gurus can help me out with this:
when I click on About -> Help in Thunar or in any other application, or press F1, nothing happens.

I'm using Xfce 4.10.

How to fix this? Can it be related to the default browser setting, since the help can sometimes be viewed in an internet browser?

Thanks much!

BluMongoose

Member

From: 'Murica

Registered: 2012-04-24

Posts: 49

Re: Help feature broken in Xfce

I tested in thunar and it is working as expected here. Have you done any configurations to your keyboard? Use the following snippet from the wiki to make sure that the F1 key really is the F1 key:

$ xev | grep -A2 --line-buffered '^KeyRelease' | sed -n '/keycode /s/^.*keycode \([0-9]*\).* (.*, \(.*\)).*$/\1 \2/p'

Also, maybe setting the browser variable will help. Mine is set like so

export BROWSER="firefox"

Of course you would change yours accordingly.

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"Think for yourself and question authority." -T. Leary

za3af

Member

Registered: 2014-08-29

Posts: 3

Re: Help feature broken in Xfce

Thank you for your help!

F1 is really the F1 key,

and I did export BROWSER="firefox" and still didn't work.

Note that my $BROWSER variable was set to xdg-open..

Any other ideas?

Thanks a lot!

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,456

Website

Re: Help feature broken in Xfce

Run a program (e.g., thunar) from a terminal, then watch what output/errors it produces when you try to access the help.

EDIT: Also - if environment variables are relevant, you must be very careful how/where you set them.  If you open a terminal in xfce and set BROWSER, then start thunar, it will *not* get the new BROWSER setting.

Last edited by Trilby (2014-08-30 11:06:08)

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

za3af

Member

Registered: 2014-08-29

Posts: 3

Re: Help feature broken in Xfce

Thank you, Trilby!

When running from the terminal, and then clicking on "Help", nothing more is displayed in the terminal window.

It actually seems that only the "xfce4 default applications" have this problem, i.e. any application below which has an "Help" menu:

% xfce4-
xfce4-about                   xfce4-display-settings        xfce4-notes-settings          xfce4-popup-notes             xfce4-session               
xfce4-accessibility-settings  xfce4-keyboard-settings       xfce4-notifyd-config          xfce4-popup-whiskermenu       xfce4-session-logout        
xfce4-appearance-settings     xfce4-kiosk-query             xfce4-panel                   xfce4-popup-windowmenu        xfce4-session-settings      
xfce4-appfinder               xfce4-mime-settings           xfce4-pm-helper               xfce4-power-manager           xfce4-settings-editor       
xfce4-clipman                 xfce4-mixer                   xfce4-popup-applicationsmenu  xfce4-power-manager-settings  xfce4-settings-manager      
xfce4-clipman-settings        xfce4-mouse-settings          xfce4-popup-clipman           xfce4-screenshooter           xfce4-taskmanager           
xfce4-dict                    xfce4-notes                   xfce4-popup-directorymenu     xfce4-sensors                 xfce4-terminal 

Also including Thunar.

The help is functioning properly (opens a browser window) in other apps like qBittorent, Orage Calendar, etc.

Any clue?

Thanks a lot!