When I try to bring up the Help for many of the preinstalled apps, I get something like the following in the Help viewer:
Document Not Found
The URI ‘help:mate-terminal/index' does not point to a valid page.
I lack the Linux expertise to determine exactly why I am getting this symptom. However, I suspect that the files are actually missing. If I am wrong about that, please give me a pointer for what I need to configure so that these URIs will resolve correctly. Otherwise, …
Is there a way to install all the missing help files in a single batch? If so, how?
If not, please clue me in on to how obtain and install the help file for any particular app for which help is currently missing.
I was trying to imply that the problem is pervasive. The "Not Found" error occurs more often than not, and I was encountering it frequently. However, in response to your request, I methodically went through all the apps on the menus. The following list includes all apps for which there is a Help button or a Help menu item implying the existence of help and for which an error of the sort I described in my first post occurred in yelp. There are a number of these for which it could be argued that no help is needed because the function of the GUI is clear enough. If, in fact, no help does exist for such cases, an adequate fix would be to simply remove from the app's GUI the button or menu item which implies the existence of such help. On the other hand, there are a number of these for which I really wanted help. I have added an asterisk on those. There is a middle ground of apps for which I have not yet experienced a need and for which I might want the help in future.
Archive Manager*
Pluma*
Eye of Mate Image Viewer
Search for Files*
Take Screenshot
Atril Document Viewer
Dictionary
Caja*
Disk Usage Analyzer
Log File Viewer
MATE Terminal*
Power Statistics
Mate System Monitor*
Keyboard Preferences
Mouse Preferences
Power Management
Appearance Preferences*
Screensaver
Window Preferences*
Assistive Technologies Preferences
Keyboard Shortcuts
Network Proxy
File Management Preferences
Preferred Applications
Startup Applications
For Tilda and the Screen Magnifier, I don't even see a way to find the help I would like to get. For galculator, there is a link to the Website under Help->About.
Main Menu Editor points to a useless Web page.
Transmission gets a 403 error in Web browser.
Please note that, in addition to my personal issues, I am also trying to point out that there are problems here which need to be addressed in the distro for RPi. It strikes me as unlikely that these help files were deliberately excluded for the purpose of saving space, as I note the existence of extensive sets of documentation that would only be of use to developers and the missing ones (which could be useful for anyone) would be small by comparison. Given the extent of the problem, a batch fix would be most welcome. (I wonder if it would be possible to create a software package the installation of which would provide the missing help files.)
On a postive documentation note, after installing Emacs, I see that its info package includes extensive documentation of the GNU Utilities. That would be useful whether you cared about Emacs or not. (Apparently it supercedes the old man pages.)
I’m a bit confused now. Your initial post clearly asked for help in setting up/reinstating your help files. it seems, now, that this request was rhetorical and you were, in fact, simply wishing to make a more general complaint that they were not present. This is not to suggest such a complaint is wrong. Just that it helps to be plain about such matters in the first instance.
However, on the basis that you are also, in fact, looking for assistance to locate the help files for these apps, I can confirm, at least for the first one I looked at (archive manager), that the help file is present on my desktop machine using UM 14.04 32 bit. This suggests to me (as it has to you) that the person who developed UM for the Pi perhaps removed some of the help files as a way of reducing iso size. But, I am just guessing as there could be any number of other reasons.
The following is a link to the full manual for file manager:
I shall hunt out similar for all of the other starred apps you have listed and post them here. But, first, can you confirm this is actually the help you require?
I would hesitate to say that I was "complaining". I am very favorably impressed by the work that has gone to making this Ubuntu distro available for the RPi. However, I did think I was calling attention to a pervasive problem that needs to be addressed in future updates. By going through all the apps methodically to discover which help files were missing, I was hoping I could be doing a favor for the maintainers who might fix this.
Is it inappropriate for me to assume that calling attention to the problem in this forum will lead to the problem being addressed by the maintainers? Or should I submit a bug report? If so, how? (I don't see a forum topic for that.)
It is a suggestion I rejected, since there are present much larger amounts of help that could only be of use to developers. The files are not all that large in any case. The help can be important.
Yes and no. What would be preferable is for the Help buttons or Help menu items in the apps to work correctly. So it's a "No" when it comes to restoring the missing help files. Failing that, a link to relevant documentation on the Web is an inconvenient backup solution, since the required URI is not accessible in the app itself. Nevertheless, it's a "Yes" in the sense that I personally do want to learn more about the apps I starred with an asterisk, and I may eventually need to learn more about some of the others.
There is a problem with help topics on the desktop version of Ubuntu MATE 15.04 as well. It also occurs in a live session (presumably for fresh installs too) for both i386 and amd64, so this is a problem across the distribution.
Help for Caja on the desktop returns this:
The URl 'help:mate-user-guide/goscaja-1' does not point to a valid page.
It's definitely something to be reported. It would of occurred easily because MATE is a continuation of GNOME 2 with new names for the utilites. (eg. Nautilus → Caja)
Bug reports are managed on Launchpad for Ubuntu MATE. If you don't have an account already, you'll need to create one. One of the maintainers is @Wimpy (Martin), and he'll be able to see bugs and provide feedback on them.
It looks like the help documentation "bug" has already been reported:
You can click on "This bug affects me" to increase the heat of the bug.
Apparently, it's because of this:
The reason that the User Guide is missing is because of a licensing conflict that means Debian can't package and distribute it. The upstream MATE team are currently working on re-writing the MATE user documentation, under a license that is compatible with Debian. This is the only outstanding item in the MATE 1.10 road-map but a significant amount of work is still required.
There's a link provided on comment #3 for a draft of the user guide:
The first draft of the MATE User Guide is progressing. You can a snapshot here - http://m-u-g.hossmax.com/
That can be regarded as my wrapup to this thread. It turns out that the problem is much more pervasive than I initially imagined - in particular, not RPi-specific. And the answer is, "You can't yet - not even in other instances of Ubuntu MATE."
There will be some additional help files in MATE 1.10, but not all. We are a small team of volunteers and the new mate-user-guide is only partially complete, we’d really appreciate any help to complete it.