Just wondering if anyone else is having trouble with the help files in 2.8.8. If I try to use them I get a message saying they're not installed, which they are, and if I try to use the on-line version I get a message about Gimp trying to download the files but nothing turns up. It doesn't matter if I use Gimp's own browser or my web browser the problem persists.
I'm not sure if this is a bug or not so it'll be interesting to see if others are having the same problem.
Running Linux Mint 16.

I had a similar problem with 2.6 though I never tried online help.

If you downloaded the English version en_GB (which is what i did), and it failed to work. Change the name of en_GB in the help folder to en and it will work. It worked for me after renaming that folder.

I installed the help files via synaptic, my download manager, and they are installed in File system/usr/share/gimp/2.0/help. I had a problem similar to this when I installed Gap and although the files where installed Gimp couldn't find them as they had installed to the wrong directory so I'm wondering if the problem with the help files is the same. I'm not sure where Gimp looks for the help files so if you could let me know the location on your system I'll see if it's the same as my one.



I checked that but the folder is already called en and not en_GB. And just to make things more confusing the on-line version has decide to start working, very strange.

The gimp.org website has been acting up the last few days for me but appears ok now. Maybe that was the answer to why you have had difficulties with the online help.

Your path looks correct to me. If you get the debian package from say
https://launchpad.net/~otto-kesselgulas ... /+packages
and unpack it, the installation path is

/usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/en_GB

I do not bother with a local installation anymore (mainly to save space in my OS partition) either use on-line or if off-line an up-to-date PDF from
http://gimp.linux.it/www/meta/
searchable and indexed - a really good job. There are tar.gz archives there as well if you fancy a manual install.

If Gimp Help is in the right location for your install of Gimp in Preferences you'll see, 'There's a locate installation of the user manual.'

FYI, I use Linux and Gimp 2.8.8.
/usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/

Search Synaptic for Gimp.
For help make sure you have at minimum, gimp-help-common & gimp-help-en.

Cheers FB, I think that must be what was wrong as the on-line version is now working.



Thanks, Odinbc. I have got both gimp-help-common and gimp-help-en installed but for some reason the preference option says the "The user manual is not installed locally" It's all rather strange.



Thanks, Rich. I might have to use the PDF version if I can't find out what the problem is. It's just more convenient to hit F1 when I want a quick answer rather than searching a PDF, but I haven't looked at the PDF yet so I guess there's probably an easy way to search that too.

Just as an update I've stumbled upon a fix for this problem. I downloaded the tar.gz as recommended by Rich 2005 and ran sudo make install and the help files appear in the Gimp preferences as an locally installed copy. At first I thought they had over written the help files that were installed at /usr/share/gimp/2.0/help/ but apparently not, they had actually installed in themselves to usr/local/share/gimp/2.0/help/

I'm not sure why this happened as the install instructions that come with the tar.gz don't say that that's where they should end up, they are suppose to go to the same location as the original help files. Anyway, I used synaptic to remove the original help files, which are for 2.6.1 and I'm not sure if maybe this was the problem with Gimp 2.8.8 not being able to find them, old help files and a new version of Gimp, or if it could be a glitch with Linux Mint.
Still, the new help files are much updated with lots of added info that wasn't available in the old ones so that's very cool.
Thanks for all the help with this.