Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Startup problems due to help

[Alex Bligh <alex@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

--On 11 July 2006 11:14 +0200 Martin Wuerthner <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:

> Since the latest change that enabled the help functionality XaraLX
> fails to start up here. After some tracing through the code I noticed
> that InitHelpPath insists on finding the directory
> /usr/share/xaralx/doc/en, which does not exist here - which is not a
> surprise since I cannot see how that should have been created by the
> build process.

I'd add that we shouldn't really be poking around randomly in directories
which don't exist in the first place. I'm hoping we are not hardcoding
directory paths in the source files which will make portabililty hard. This
is exactly what Vadim was saying should be specified by -D on the compile
line, so it can be specified from configure. Even if we are using binreloc
etc., that's not a reason to encode things in the source which are going to
be wrong (statistically) on most platforms (as there is no right answer). I
realize the help file stuff is "first cut" and thus I'm offering no
criticism, but we need to get this right.

Can I suggest we document our own directory structure for resources and
things (e.g. doc/[language] movies/ templates/ or whatever) and by default
get the root location (e.g. "/usr/share/xaralx", or "/usr/local/xaralx", or
"/usr/apps/xaralx", or "/opt/xaralx" or whatever) from the user preferences
file which would be prepended to the relevant node. When the preference is
not there (i.e. on creation) get it from a string (binreloc'd if necessary)
which is defined on the compile-command line from a variable, which can be
set at configure time. That way we solve the "where is the system installed
directory" problem once and for all.

Alex