handling manual pages with external links within the GUI

[landam]

Reported by madi on 8 Apr 2014 09:59 UTC In the manual pages, there are sometimes links to external pages, like wiki. See e.g. v.generalize has:

v.generalize Tutorial

When the manual page is displayed within the GUI frame of the v.generalize module, and the user clicks on the link "v.generalize Tutorial", the user would expect the wiki page to be displayed in the system browser instead of the GUI. It currently displays in the GUI and it is quite inconvenient because for example images are not visible, and moreover you may want to keep the wiki page open while running the module. My suggestion would be, from the GUI, to call the browser whenever a link in the manual page starts with "http".

GRASS GIS version and provenance

svn-trunk

Migrated-From: https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/2249

[landam]

Comment by wenzeslaus on 8 Apr 2014 14:53 UTC I'm not sure what user would expect. But you might be right. External links are special and the HTML rendering capabilities of the used widget are (currently) very limited. Perhaps, external links should be marked similarly to external links in wikis (e.g., with some special picture before or after). This is a topic for a special ticket since implementation is not trivial.

Alternative solution, is to have a button there "Open current page in web browser" (or something shorter). This is what I would use sometimes even for manual pages. This feature can be actually implemented regardless of the external links issue.

[landam]

Comment by neteler on 9 Apr 2014 13:47 UTC Replying to [comment:1 wenzeslaus]:

I'm not sure what user would expect. But you might be right. External links are special and the HTML rendering capabilities of the used widget are (currently) very limited.

An initial improvement could be as easy as this (if technically possible):

If the link contains "http", open it with an external browser (env var $GRASS_HTML_BROWSER), otherwise open page as currently in the wx-browser.

[landam]

Comment by wenzeslaus on 9 Apr 2014 13:57 UTC Replying to [comment:2 neteler]:

Replying to [comment:1 wenzeslaus]:

I'm not sure what user would expect. But you might be right. External links are special and the HTML rendering capabilities of the used widget are (currently) very limited.

An initial improvement could be as easy as this (if technically possible):

If the link contains "http", open it with an external browser (env var $GRASS_HTML_BROWSER), otherwise open page as currently in the wx-browser.

As far as I know, we are currently using "system browser" not $GRASS_HTML_BROWSER in wxGUI and I'm not sure what is correct. However, the difference is just few lines.

Here is the solution http://wxpython-users.1045709.n5.nabble.com/Open-a-URL-with-the-default-browser-from-an-HtmlWindow-td2326349.html Open a URL with the default browser from an HtmlWindow? for your suggestion.

They are using Python https://docs.python.org/2/library/webbrowser.html webbrowser, the alternative is http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.6.3/wx_miscellany.html#wxlaunchdefaultbrowser wxLaunchDefaultBrowser.

The button I was talking about might be even more simple, just call the browser with current URL/file.

I would suggest to implement both.

[landam]

Comment by neteler on 5 May 2016 14:08 UTC Milestone renamed

[landam]

Comment by neteler on 28 Dec 2016 15:04 UTC Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[landam]

Modified by @landam on 5 May 2017 20:40 UTC

[landam]

Comment by @landam on 1 Sep 2017 20:28 UTC All enhancement tickets should be assigned to 7.4 milestone.

[landam]

Comment by neteler on 26 Jan 2018 11:40 UTC Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[landam]

Modified by neteler on 12 Jun 2018 20:48 UTC

[landam]

Comment by @landam on 25 Sep 2018 16:51 UTC All enhancement tickets should be assigned to 7.6 milestone.

[landam]

Comment by @landam on 25 Jan 2019 21:07 UTC Ticket retargeted after milestone closed