ChmSee is an HTML Help viewer for Unix/Linux.

Homepage: http://code.google.com/p/chmsee

ChmSee 2.0 has been refacted from GTK+ based to a xulrunner application.

Most of ChmSee codes use cross-platform languages: JavaScript, XUL, CSS, building is unnecessary for them.

But there is still a component you need to compile, because it is written by C++ language. This is an important component that used to retrieve HTML and image from packed chm file. The source codes for this component are located in chmsee/src directory.

Before compiling, you must confirm xulrunner sdk and chmlib already installed in your system.

Then cd chmsee/src directory, choose one of Makefile.${OS} files and rename it to Makefile. If there isn't proper Makefile.${OS} file for your OS in chmsee distribution, you can create it yourself by copying a similar Makefile.${OS} or Makefile.sample to Makefile and modify the INCLUDE, LIB or CFLAGS variables in it.

If the Makefile is ready, type GNU make in the chmsee/src directory. After building finished, the compiled XPCOM component and its xpt defines will be output to chmsee/components directory.

You can launch ChmSee immediately in the chmsee folder with xulrunner platform command from xulrunner sdk or firefox.

In the following examples, ChmSee source directory is located in ~/downloads/chmsee, and xulrunner sdk is installed to /usr/lib/xulrunner-sdk, firefox is installed to /usr/lib/firefox.

Launch ChmSee with xulrunner sdk tool:

$ cd ~/downloads/chmsee
$ /usr/lib/xulrunner-sdk/xulrunner application.ini

Launch ChmSee with firefox:

$ cd ~/downloads/chmsee
$ /usr/lib/firefox/firefox --app application.ini

You can also use xulrunner sdk tool xulrunner to install ChmSee to any directory.

If you want to install it to ~/tools/chmsee, enter following command:

$ /usr/lib/xulrunner-sdk/xulrunner --install-app ~/downloads/chmsee ~/tools

The ~/tools/chmsee directory will be created and contains an execute file chmsee, running this file will launch ChmSee program.

If chmsee can not launch and display a "Could not find the Mozilla runtime." message. You need ensure that there is a xulrunner runtime directory located in the installed chmsee folder, if not, add one by yourself:

$ cd ~/tools/chmsee
$ ln -s /usr/lib/xulrunner-sdk xulrunner

If you have firefox installed, this link can be changed to:

$ ln -s /usr/lib/firefox xulrunner

If you encounter any ChmSee problem, please issue to http://code.google.com/p/chmsee/issues/entry, thanks.

ChmSee logo comes from Open Clip Art Library. http://www.openclipart.org/detail/17922 It's author is AJ Ashton, thanks.