The National Enquirer reports at 8:59 PM -0500 10/5/04, Claire Hart wrote: > >> I selected "Mac Help" under "Library", and the Mac Help window filled > >> in as it should. I clicked here and there, and it works fine. Yeah! > >> I quit it, then opened it again, and it was blank again, requiring me > >> to go up to the menu and select it again! Thanks for helping me get > >> access to it, but any clues as to why I have to add the extra step? > > > > Dunno. As an experiment, you might want to quit Help Viewer. Then, > > going in > > your home directory, go in 'Library', then, inside 'Library', > > 'Preferences' > > and retrieve the files named 'com.apple.help.plist', > > 'com.apple.helpui.plist' and 'com.apple.helpviewer.plist' and take > > them out > > of the Preferences folder. Then, try again and see if that helps. > >Since I didn't know what a home directory was, I did a search to find >'com.apple.help.plist'. (Now I know what my home directory is.) Yes, >it did help. It seems to have fixed the problem. I clicked a few >links, did a little search, and all is well. Thanks! Now, what do I >do with those three files that I took out of the Preferences folder? >They are sitting on my desktop at the moment. > >One more question: Zinio reader opens at startup. I rarely use it. I >thought I'd take it out of the Startup Items folder (OS 9 thinking) but >I can't find such a folder. I checked Zinio's preferences, but the >startup mentioned there seems to refer to when Zinio starts up rather >than when your computer starts up. Any recommendations?
Claire, I'm going to add this at the beginning so that those who don't want to wade through the rest of the following information, won't miss it. I mentioned it on the list back in May, but it's worth mentioning again. You might want to try the following utility if you don't want to hunt down specific .plist files. Preferential Treatment <http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14450> Run it, and if it finds any corrupted preferences files, use the program to delete and reset them. PT will parse invisible files (i.e., files whose name begins with a dot) as long as their names end in .plist and they are in a directory that PT is set to search. If an invisible file is found to be corrupt, using PT to move it to the trash will also work to remove it. BTW this is freeware!! (I'm not sure if the following will help with your difficulties, but I'll pass it along just in case. There is some duplication of information, but the context is slightly different in each case.) I assume this is still true in Panther. The /Applications folder is "known" to the system. It must be called "Applications" and it must in the root directory. It's the only folder that OS X looks for applications automatically. You can, theoretically, put them any place you like. But applications outside of the /Applications folder won't be managed by the system. They won't appear in the "Open With..." list, or in the AppleScript editor, or in services, or be recognized as URL helpers, or be automatically associated with their document file types, or appear in the Help Viewer. The following link has some troubleshooting tips for the Help Viewer: <http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/helpviewer.html> As does this one: <http://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html> Item #22 Losing Mac Help under OS X is a common occurrence. Have a look at: <http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/helpviewer.html> (I think this contains one additional .plist than Laurent gave you.) ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.helpui/TOCCache.plist ( Home -> Library -> Caches -> com.apple.helpui -> TOCCache.plist ) ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.helpviewer.plist ( Home -> Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.helpviewer.plist ) ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help.plist ( Home -> Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.help.plist ) ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.helpui.plist ( Home -> Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.helpui.plist ) (I forget where I came across this, but it suggests the steps to follow when troubleshooting this problem.) For reasons best known to Apple, Help Viewer tends to be more prone to these kinds of problems than other applications. Fortunately, there are a limited number of things that can cause such problems. Let's run through them: 1. Corrupted preferences. Follow this path ~/Library/Preferences (where ~ is your user folder) and toss out the com.apple.help.plist, com.apple.helpui.plist, and com.apple.helpviewer.plist files. If preference corruption was the problem, Help Viewer should work when you re-launch it. 2. Corrupted cache. Okay, so trashing the prefs files didn't help. Try trashing the help viewer's cache folder (called com.apple.helpui), which can be found at ~/Library/Caches. 3. Check for bad help files. Not all help files were created equally -- meaning most work, but some don't. In Jaguar you'll find third-party help files by following this path: /Library/Documentation/Help. Remove any third-party help files and try launching Help Viewer again. If it works correctly, one of the help files you've removed is funky. Try the add-one-at-a-time-and-relaunch-Help-Viewer trick to track down the culprit. HTH, Bob -- If replying privately, please include my name in the To: address, so that my filters won't send your reply to the trash. -- G-Books is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Check our web site for refurbished PowerBooks | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-Books list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-books%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
