webkit rules
For GIMP 2.6, we ported the GIMP help browser to WebKit. Works a lot better than the old version that was using gtkhtml2. The main advantage is probably that it works for online help. But WebKit has some other nice features also. Roman just added support for searching in the current page. Just press Ctrl-F and you will get a Search box similar to what you know from your favorite web browser.
Ubuntu Hardy doesn’t have the latest WebKit release packaged. So I have backported the packages from Intrepid. Use at will, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t work. It works fine for me.
July 16th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
What’s the difference between the GIMP help browser and Yelp, if they’re both using WebKit now?
– Chris
July 16th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
The GIMP help browser is what we bundle with GIMP. yelp is the help browser that comes bundled with GNOME. Since GIMP works on lots of platforms, not only on GNOME, it can’t use the GNOME help-browser.
As far as I know yelp also doesn’t provide the API that we need to implement context-sensitive help. If it would, we would probably offer an option to use it.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Does that mean GIMP ditch gtkhtml2 completely? I am worried about the stability of WebKit since I believe that WebKit is much more immature than gtkhtml2 (fix me if i am wrong)
July 17th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Yes, we are happy to leave gtkhtml2 behind. It has been unmaintained for years and WebKit appears to do a much better job.
July 20th, 2008 at 2:22 am
This is very cool. How will it behave if WebKit is not installed though?
I’ll need to see if i can make it work with the WebKit framework that is installed by default on OS X, though i doubt it would play nice with GTK
July 21st, 2008 at 3:01 pm
The configure script will detect if WebKit is installed or not. If it is not available, the Help Browser plug-in will not be built. The user can then still browse the user manual using a web browser.