If you are interested, here is a snippet of how I did it a long time ago
in a galaxy far, far away. It avoids spawning multiple instances of the
same .chm.
#
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# The Help..Contents menu command
def OnMnuHelpContents(self, event):
"""This method opens the Help file (if it isn't open already)."""
# Display the help file - nothing fancy - just run it
# ToDo - if already running bring to top (I can't see a way to do
# this, currently)
global helpfile_active
helpfilename = os.path.join(r'path_to_your_helpfile',
r'yourhelpfile.chm')
if not helpfile_active:
helpprocid = wxNewId()
self.helpfile_process = wxProcess(self, helpprocid)
EVT_END_PROCESS(self, helpprocid, self.OnHelpWindowTerminate)
helpfile_active = wxExecute('hh.exe %s' % helpfilename, False,
self.helpfile_process)
#
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
def OnHelpWindowTerminate(self, event):
"""This event function is fired when the help window is closed."""
global helpfile_active
if helpfile_active:
self.helpfile_process.Detach()
self.helpfile_process.Destroy()
helpfile_active = 0
#
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Couldn't tell you if os.startfile is better or not...but I imagine
wxExecute is calling the Windows ShellExecute under the covers anyway. Of
course, this also fails if they do not have hh.exe installed but this is
only on stock Win95 or older NT machines with IE < 5.0. I imagine you
could spruce it up with more error checking.
You may also want to get rid of the global and use a real attribute...this
is from my beginner days. ;o)
Markus.
On 20 Jan 2004 18:03:36 -0800, Tom <it********@yahoo.com> wrote:
A question for gui application programmers. . .
I 've got some GUI programs, written in Python/wxPython, and I've got
a help button and a help menu item. Also, I've got a compiled file
made with the microsoft HTML workshop utility, lets call it
c:\path\help.chm. My question is how do you launch it from the GUI?
What logic do I put behind the "help" button, in other words.
I thought it would be
os.spawnv(os.P_DETACH, "c:\\path\\help.chm", [])
but I get an error:
OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error
so I guess help.chm isn't executable itself, but is associated with
some unknown executable. I tried explorer.exe- at the dos cmd line it
basically works to type
explorer.exe c:\path\help.chm
although there is a nag screen that would be nice to do without.
so you'd think
os.spawnv(os.P_DETACH, 'explorer.exe', ["c:\\path\\help.chm"])
would be equivalent but it fails. I have to believe someone out there
in python community likes to include help.chm with their applications,
nad there is a right way to do this.
On another note, are there pure python based help viewers that people
use instead? The reason I ask is that would be more portable then the
*.chm files are. If there is such a beast I can't find it.
