Dodgy Help Viewer

[G99]

Maybe I shouldn't worry about this, but, it did seem kind of weird. I searched for "bootable copy" in Disk Utility's Help Viewer. I got two results. I clicked the first, and I got an error message, saying it could not read the URL, even though the thing it said it was trying to get was clearly a location within my disk. Strange thing is, if I clicked it after that, it would take me to Help Viewer's "home". I relaunched, and when searching for it again, I only got the other result. Weird stuff is going on, and I thought it would be good to ask what was going on.

 

[realityisterror]

Help Viewer is a horrendous piece of software... I'm not sure why Apple hasn't replaced it yet...

Try moving everything in your home folder/Library/Caches/com.apple.helpui to the trash and see if your problem is remedied.

Also home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help.plist and com.apple.helpviewer.plist may help.

Good luck

 

[G99]

Thank you for your advice.
But, I don't think deleting prefs has got anything to do with it.
What has happened is that I got the error message, and the topic causing the problem disappeared. Could you try looking for "bootable copy" in your Disk Utility Help Viewer, on your machine, and see if the same thing happens?

 

[yellow]

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/helpviewer.html

 

[WildCowboy]

Could you try looking for "bootable copy" in your Disk Utility Help Viewer, on your machine, and see if the same thing happens?

I get one entry: "Duplicating a CD or DVD"

 

[G99]

I get one entry: "Duplicating a CD or DVD"

Maybe mine was just coincidence. Nothing funny has happened since, too.

 

[G99]

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/helpviewer.html

I'll check that out.

 

[mkrishnan]

I get one entry: "Duplicating a CD or DVD"

I also mmm... actually, okay, this is what happened to me.

I tried bootable copy with no quotes first. I'm pretty sure there were two hits. And then I tried adding the quotes, and got only one hit (the same one my cowboy friend got). But when I took the quotes away again, I still only got one hit, and the second hit seems to be gone. I didn't try to launch that supposed second help file, though, and I'm not 100% sure what happened.

When you say you're sure it was a location on the HD, do you mean that you're sure it was by virtue of the icon? Maybe Help Viewer is trying to update files or something, and checks the net to see if the help files should be updated?

Any chance you remember the title of the missing help page?

 

[WildCowboy]

FYI...my search was done without quotes.

 

[G99]

I also mmm... actually, okay, this is what happened to me.

I tried bootable copy with no quotes first. I'm pretty sure there were two hits. And then I tried adding the quotes, and got only one hit (the same one my cowboy friend got). But when I took the quotes away again, I still only got one hit, and the second hit seems to be gone. I didn't try to launch that supposed second help file, though, and I'm not 100% sure what happened.

When you say you're sure it was a location on the HD, do you mean that you're sure it was by virtue of the icon? Maybe Help Viewer is trying to update files or something, and checks the net to see if the help files should be updated?

Any chance you remember the title of the missing help page?

I can hardly remember it exactly. Damn, I should have taken a screenshot!
Basically, it said, around the lines of: Help Viewer cannot open the following URL: /Applications/Disk Utility/etc.
I can't remember anything past that point. It definitely wasn't the contents of Help Viewer it was trying to get, as I am 100% sure the first word of the location was "applications", and the app is not found in "applications".

 

[mkrishnan]

It definitely wasn't the contents of Help Viewer it was trying to get, as I am 100% sure the first word of the location was "applications", and the app is not found in "applications".

The location of the Disk Utility help files is:

/applications/utilities/disk utility.app/resources/english.lproj/diskutilityhelp/

(where english.lproj is replaced by whatever other localization you're using, if you are not using English....)

In fact, if you look through that folder, all of the non-web help files are HTML files in the pgs subfolder.

 

[G99]

The location of the Disk Utility help files is:

/applications/utilities/disk utility.app/resources/english.lproj/diskutilityhelp/

(where english.lproj is replaced by whatever other localization you're using, if you are not using English....)

In fact, if you look through that folder, all of the non-web help files are HTML files in the pgs subfolder.

I see. Its really cluttered in there!
But, why would Help Viewer think it was a URL?

 

[yellow]

Because Help Viewer is a glorified web browser. Unfortunately for Help Viewer, it's massively slow and outdated.

 

[mkrishnan]

I see. Its really cluttered in there!
But, why would Help Viewer think it was a URL?

Help Viewer is, as far I understand, a specialized web browser based on the WebKit coreservice in OS X (upon which Safari is also based). So I think that in its internal lingo, all documents to be displayed inside the window are referenced by URLs. As you know, any file can be referenced as a URL, so a filename location can easily be typecase into a URL for WebKit to handle....

It's strange, what you saw, and what I think I saw (in an even briefer moment than you, sadly).... But I'm not sure what the explanation is.

EDIT: It's a more detailed version of what Yellow said, but I'll leave it anyway, because I'm a post whore.

 

[G99]

EDIT: It's a more detailed version of what Yellow said, but I'll leave it anyway, because I'm a post whore.

I know