(OLD) (ARCHIVED) Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[BarryK]

Some pups, including Quirky, not sure about latest Xenialpup and Slacko, use 'surfer' for the internal html help viewer.

This is a very small web page browser, written in C and uses GTK and libgtkhtml.

It has a couple of dependencies from the same guy who created surfer, 'gnet' and 'libsystem', for pups that use surfer, these should already be in the devx.

All sources are here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/sources/t2/april/Surfer-0.0.7-patched_libgtkhtml.tar.bz2
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/sources/t2/april/gnet-2.0.8.tar.bz2
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/sources/t2/april/libSystem-0.1.6-patched1.tar.bz2

Compiling is simple Makefile, from memory, need to edit PREFIX, change from /usr/local to /usr

libgtkhtml is there also:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/sources/t2/april/libgtkhtml-2.11.1.tar.bz2

Surfer is a great little viewer for local html files, however, there is one big problem. libgtkhtml supports html4 and some css, no javascript.
If surfer is used to view a local help file, which has links to the internet, then surfer will attempt to open those links, and in many cases will crash.

What would be really great is to hack the C source of surfer somehow, so that two kinds of hyperlinks can be specified in a web page, local, suitable to be opened by surfer, and remote (the internet) and opened by 'defaultbrowser' (which will be SeaMonkey, Firefox, etc).

I have been staring at the source code, but can't see how to do it. So, thought that I would throw the problem out there, see if someone with gtk coding skills can think of how to do it. Or maybe not even gtk, just C skills.

There might not be any takers, but you never know...

Edit
Note, there is one little foible of surfer, it does not like "file://" prefix on local links. So open a file like this:
# surfer /usr/share/doc/home.htm

[SFR]

Hey Barry, maybe something like this?

[disciple]

Using xdg-open is more portable - is it included in all puppies these days?

[BarryK]

SFR,
I tested your patch, it works great. I appreciate the help, it makes Surfer so much more useful.

I have applied SFR's patch and assigned it as HelpSurfer version 0.1, source here:
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00632

[SFR]

Alright, glad it works!

However, here's a small revision, because I just realized that URLs that contain an amphersand won't be working properly without quotes.
Also, replaced all calls to g_str_has_prefix with one g_regex_match_simple and since g_strdup_printf allocates memory, I had to use a transient variable to free it afterwards.

[gyro]

It might be a bit rude of me to comment since you already have a working patch;
But would it not be better to turn the test around:

[SFR]

Not at all, better_code > one's_feelings.

However, I ditched this approach at the very beginning, because of:

[BarryK]

SFR,
That's great, I will apply your latest patch.

While I am putting in requests

If you look at helpsurfer-0.1, src/Makefile has "-D NOURLBAR, because as a simple help viewer I didn't think it needed the url entry box.

Also there is "-D EMBEDDED", which removes the drop-down menu bar.

The icon bar still displays, but it would be nice with an "exit" icon. Currently, the only way to close the app is by the close-box top-right of window.

[SFR]

Here you go:

[BarryK]

That's great!

I have bumped HelpSurfer to version 0.2, see blog post:

http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00635

[mavrothal]

ignor...

[BarryK]

Have now bumped HelpSurfer to version 0.3.

Source:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/sources/alphabetical/h/helpsurfer-0.3.tar.gz

PET:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/packages/pet_packages-xerus/helpsurfer-0.3-xerus64.pet

There was something else that I wanted HelpSurfer to be able to do: execute local executables.
This is not a web browser, it is a local help viewer, and although it is not legitimate html, HelpSurfer now supports hyperlinks to

"exec:<executable> <parameters>"

For example:

[technosaurus]

I love to see people working on projects like this, but netsurf-framebuffer or even the gtk version is better and smaller... and still actively developed.
The big advantage to the framebuffer version though is that puppy's man pages work in the console. I put together a patch a while back that automatically detected linux framebuffer vs X11(actually xcb) backends... it even works in wayland and any platform with SDL support. Not mention that netsurf now uses duktape for JavaScript support.

If you want something really lite, check out goingnuts Chimera patches.

Regarding the exec "feature", this can be done more securely using cgi scripts on localhost like slitaz does for a lot of their apps (things we typically use gtkdialog for)

#EDIT: added links

[don570]

I don't know how to program but I did make the following observation...

If error messages are removed then more downloaded web pages will open up correctly. For example downloaded murga forum web pages
open nicely (except for images) and plain text files and XML.

What I did was simplify following

[BarryK]

A quick post: yesterday I bumped the version to 0.5.

Source:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/sources/alphabetical/h/helpsurfer-0.5.tar.gz

Blog post:
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00641


don570,
I will take a look at your suggestion.