Inconsistent availability of user help

[paddy]

User help for core MATE applications, panel applets etc. non-functional.
Availability of user help for Control Centre items inconsistent.

Reproduce (core apps): press [F1] within core app like Caja/Pluma or select menu item [Help][Contents]
Reproduce (panel applets): right click applet, select [Help] from context menu

Expected outcome: help text displayed

Actual outcome: "Document Not Found" "The URI ‘help:xxx/yyy’ does not point to a valid page." (substitute for 'xxx/yyy')

Note: for /some/ items in the Control Centre, clicking their [Help] button does correctly display their help text. For others, the above behaviour occurs.

[Edit: installation from ubuntu-mate-14.04.1-final-desktop-i386.iso]

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

The reason that the User Guide is missing is because of a licensing conflict that means Debian can't package and distribute it. The upstream MATE team are currently working on re-writing the MATE user documentation, under a license that is compatible with Debian. This is the only outstanding item in the MATE 1.10 road-map but a significant amount of work is still required.

As a temporary measure I will see if I can publish the required packages based on the existing documentation in the Ubuntu PPAs.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

The first draft of the MATE User Guide is progressing. You can a snapshot here - http://m-u-g.hossmax.com/

[Mark Pereira (markjna)]

This bug affects me, and was initially reported here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/yelp/+bug/1360756

[DrHow (djv3)]

This bug affects me too, and I initially called attention to it based on my experience with Raspberry Pi 2 here:
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/how-can-i-install-help-files-missing-in-rpi-distro/1562

For that thread, I took the effort to methodically enumerate all the apps for which implied help is missing.

There are a lot of beginners on Raspberry Pi 2 for which the Ubuntu MATE distro is the the most attractive out there. But such folks really need access to the help, or they will likely become frustrated.

For me, about the only hole that the first draft of the MATE User Guide plugs is the documentation for MATE Terminal.

What's really needed is the help files that the Help buttons and Help Menu items are trying to refer to.

In the meantime, I guess I will just have to google for help based on the Gnome 2 predecessors.

Has anyone made a legitimate effort to resolve the licensing conflict? It is hard to imagine that there should have to be one.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

TL;DR It will be fixed soon.

Debian consider GFDL licensed software non-free. Most of the MATE help and documentation is under the GFDL 1.1 license, as we inherited it from GNOME2. Consequently the GFDL licensed help/documentation is patched out of the Debian packages and Ubuntu syncs the MATE packages directly from Debian.

I recently did some research about the GFDL in Debian and discovered a Debian General Resolution from 2006 that states "software licensed under the GFDL without invariant sections is considered free software".

So I did some code archaeology. All the GFDL help/documentation in MATE is without invariant sections, good. Checking the same for GNOME2, those were also without invariant sections and GNOME 2.30 (the last version of GNOME2 to ship in Debian) included all the help/documentation. Yes!

So, the upstream MATE team have re-instated the GFDL licensed help/documentation in the recent point releases. Meanwhile I have sought agreement from Debian to add the MATE help/documentation back. I am currently in the process of updating every MATE package in Debian to migrate to MATE 1.10 and adding the full suite of help/documentation.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

Fix release in mate-desktop 1.10 for Ubuntu MATE 15.10 and should feature in beta 1.