Introduction

ChmSee is an HTML Help viewer for Unix/Linux.

Homepage: http://code.google.com/p/chmsee

Building

ChmSee 2.0 has been refacted from GTK+ based to a xulrunner application.

Most of ChmSee codes use cross-platform languages: JavaScript, XUL, CSS, building is unnecessary for them.

But there is still a component you need to compile, because it is written by C++ language. This is an important component that used to retrieve HTML and image from packed chm file. The source codes for this component are located in chmsee/src directory.

Before compiling, you must confirm xulrunner sdk and chmlib already installed in your system.

Then cd chmsee/src directory, choose one of Makefile.${OS} files and rename it to Makefile. If there isn't proper Makefile.${OS} file for your OS in chmsee distribution, you can create it yourself by copying a similar Makefile.${OS} or Makefile.sample to Makefile and modify the INCLUDE, LIB or CFLAGS variables in it.

If the Makefile is ready, type GNU make in the chmsee/src directory. After building finished, the compiled XPCOM component and its xpt defines will be output to chmsee/components directory.

Running

You can launch ChmSee immediately in the chmsee folder with xulrunner platform command from xulrunner sdk or firefox.

In the following examples, ChmSee source directory is located in ~/downloads/chmsee, and xulrunner sdk is installed to /usr/lib/xulrunner-sdk, firefox is installed to /usr/lib/firefox.

Launch ChmSee with xulrunner sdk tool:

$ cd ~/downloads/chmsee
$ /usr/lib/xulrunner-sdk/xulrunner application.ini

Launch ChmSee with firefox:

$ cd ~/downloads/chmsee
$ /usr/lib/firefox/firefox --app application.ini

Installing

You can also use xulrunner sdk tool xulrunner to install ChmSee to any directory.

If you want to install it to ~/tools/chmsee, enter following command:

$ /usr/lib/xulrunner-sdk/xulrunner --install-app ~/downloads/chmsee ~/tools

The ~/tools/chmsee directory will be created and contains an execute file chmsee, running this file will launch ChmSee program.

If chmsee can not launch and display a "Could not find the Mozilla runtime." message. You need ensure that there is a xulrunner runtime directory located in the installed chmsee folder, if not, add one by yourself:

$ cd ~/tools/chmsee
$ ln -s /usr/lib/xulrunner-sdk xulrunner

If you have firefox installed, this link can be changed to:

$ ln -s /usr/lib/firefox xulrunner

Report bug

If you encounter any ChmSee problem, please issue to http://code.google.com/p/chmsee/issues/entry, thanks.

About ChmSee logo

ChmSee logo comes from Open Clip Art Library. http://www.openclipart.org/detail/17922 It's author is AJ Ashton, thanks.