How do you implement help (using mallard) for a gtk3 app?

Question

I am trying to create my own gtk3 application. I like to use mallard to display some help about how to use my application. However I do not know how to code such that when the help menu item is clicked the help (mallard) is shown. I have the .page files already ready.

Please note, I am not asking how to create help files using mallard. But rather how to integrate mallard into my gtk3 help.

Answer 1

Good question. In cases like this, I always look on git.gnome.org to see how Gedit does it. That's an excellent 'example' application.

First, look here at how they organize their help files:

help
  \--C
  |  \--*.page
  \--Makefile.am
  \--ar
  \--bg
  \--ca
  \--...other languages...

In help/Makefile.am, they use @YELP_HELP_RULES@ to install the files (which is set up by YELP_HELP_INIT in configure.ac.)

Then, when the user clicks Help/Contents, they open the URI help:gedit or help:gedit/link_id with gtk_show_uri() (see here, in the functions gedit_app_show_help_impl() and gedit_app_help_link_id_impl()) The files are then, presumably, automatically fetched by the desktop help system, translated into the proper language, and displayed in Yelp.