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asterics / AsTeRICS

The Assistive Technology Rapid Integration & Construction Set
http://www.asterics.eu
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ACS-Help does not display #245

Closed ChrisVeigl closed 6 years ago

ChrisVeigl commented 6 years ago

When pressing F1 with a selected Plugin in the "legacy" ACS on Windows, the new Help System does not come up. The plugin-specific help pages should be displayed but the asterics help page appears in the browser with an error message that the help file cannot be found.

This might be related to Browsers which cannot display the help files from the local file system (when the ARE is not connected).

It would be good to get the help files from the web in this case (as a fallback ?)

deinhofer commented 6 years ago

Could you provide a screenshot?

If the reason is related to local file access restrictions of the browser then the easiest solution would be to use the online help as a primary source, if the ACS is not connected to the ARE and the help of the ARE if the ACS is connected to it. The reason why we need this 2-level approach is that the online version only reflects the plugin-set of the current AsTeRICS version. In contrast, the help which is hosted on the ARE directly also contains pugin-help files of newly created plugins.

Workaround

Use the online help

ChrisVeigl commented 6 years ago

here a screenshot of the problem:

screenhunter_490 may 08 21 22

additional information: i just tried the help system on my lenovo win10 laptop and is was unusable as well! When pressing F1 in the legacy ACS (with a selected plugin) the Internet Explorer was opened (!) - and believe me - i did not use IE for years and it definitely is not my standard application for web pages ...

also after connecting to the ARE, the help files could not be displayed.

after disconnection from the ARE, following error message was displayed when hitting F1:

screenhunter_491 may 08 21 23

(internet connection was present at any time)

When pressing F1 in the WebACS, nothing happens at all.

The help files are available on my systen in the local ARE subfolder /web/help the only way to use them is by manually opening them ...

From my perspective, the help system is currently broken.

deinhofer commented 6 years ago

On my Win7 laptop with firefox 59.0.3 as standard browser everything works as expected.

So the following questions should be investigated:

Obvisously the behaviour of legacy ACS and the WebACS is not the same, this should be unified to

  1. If the ACS (WebACS) is not connected to the ARE: Open ACS-Help online (http://asterics.github.io/AsTeRICS/webapps/WebACS/help/index.html?acs&ACS_Basic_Functions.htm)
  2. If the ACS (WebACS) is connected to the ARE: Open the ACS-Help of the ARE to reflect the plugin set of the ARE (http://localhost:8081/webapps/WebACS/help/index.html?acs&ACS_Basic_Functions.htm)
klues commented 6 years ago

On my computer the same behaviour: in lecacy ACS pressing F1 opens the help in Internet Explorer.

deinhofer commented 6 years ago

@ChrisVeigl @klues @sabicalija @stefanstocki @benjaminaigner @kingcole

Please try the following two commands on the command line of your windows system and post

  1. Try explorer cmd 
    explorer http://asterics.github.io/AsTeRICS/help/index.html
  2. Try start cmd 
    start http://asterics.github.io/AsTeRICS/help/index.html
klues commented 6 years ago
  1. opens in Firefox (my standard browser)
  2. opens in Firefox (my standard browser)

Windows 10 Education, Build 16299.431 Firefox 60.0.1

klues commented 6 years ago

I think we should just return explorer or start in this method: https://github.com/asterics/AsTeRICS/blob/master/ACS/ACS/MainWindow.xaml.cs#L7931 after we finished this test.

deinhofer commented 6 years ago

Win 7 Enterprise, SP1, 64bit

installed browsers

  1. opens firefox 60.0.1
  2. opens firefox 60.0.1
benjaminaigner commented 6 years ago

System 1

  1. opens in Firefox (my standard browser)
  2. opens in Firefox (my standard browser)

System 2

  1. opens in Firefox (my standard browser)
  2. opens in Firefox (my standard browser)
ChrisVeigl commented 6 years ago

System: Lenovo Thinkpad 51s Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (2018)

Browsers: Firefox 60.0.1 (standard) Chrome Version 66.0.3359.181 Microsoft Edge 42.17134.1.0 Internet Explorer 11

1: help system opens correctly in Firefox 2: help system opens correctly in FireFox

(will try the other system - where the problem occured - later)

kingcole commented 6 years ago

Windows 10 Enterprise, 64bit, Version 1803, build 17134.48 Firefox 60.0.1 (Standard) Google Chrome Version 66.0.3359.181 (Offizieller Build) (64-Bit) Safari 5.1.7 (7534.57.2) Opera 52.0.2871.64 Microsoft Edge 42.17134.1.0

opened help correctly in Firefox in both cases

ChrisVeigl commented 6 years ago

System2: Lenovo Yoga Pro Windows 8.1 64-bit (2013)

Browsers: Firefox 60.0.1 Chrome Version 66.0.3359.181 (standard) Internet Explorer 11

1: help system opens correctly in Chome 2: help system opens correctly in Chrome

This is the System which causes problems in the ACS

klues commented 6 years ago

it seems that both start and explorer opens the standard browser in all cases. So I think the issue should be resolved if we just return one of them in this method instead of the registry-browser-search: https://github.com/asterics/AsTeRICS/blob/master/ACS/ACS/MainWindow.xaml.cs#L7931

deinhofer commented 6 years ago

Let's fix the opening of the standard browser as @klues suggested. Instead of searching in the registry use explorer or start cmd. In the ARE and the ApplicationLauncher plugin, the actual command used to open a website is configured in areProperties, e.g.

# Default Windows command to start a browser.
ARE.openURL.cmd.windows=C:/Users/mad/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe
# Default Mac OSX command to start a browser.
ARE.openURL.cmd.macosx=open
# Default Linux command to start a browser.
ARE.openURL.cmd.linux=sensible-browser

which works pretty good. Should we do the same here? This would allow the user to configure a browser of choice as well?

This issue was split up into two. Let's use this one to fix the browser open problem of the legacy ACS. #252 describes how to fix the strategy of which help files are actually shown.

ChrisVeigl commented 6 years ago

Sounds like a good solution!

If it is possible to detect the problem during page display, it would be nice to show a message how to configure/change the Webbrowser

klues commented 6 years ago

should be solved with https://github.com/asterics/AsTeRICS/pull/253/files please try out:

git pull
git checkout bklaus/issue#252/unify-strategy-to-show-help
//start file AsTeRICS\bin\ACS\ACS.exe

F1 should open online help, and if connected to ARE the help from ARE.

klues commented 6 years ago

in asterics.ini there are now two new parameters:

acsOnlineHelpBaseURL=http://asterics.github.io/AsTeRICS/
helpBrowserCommand=explorer

acsOnlineHelpBaseURL is the path to the online help. helpBrowserCommand is the command to open the browser, could be replaced by absolute path to another browser (e.g. Chrome) if required.

deinhofer commented 6 years ago

Fixed with #253