Bug 1443179

Summary: yelp can't open html files by path from CLI: "Unknown Error" & "URL cannot be shown"
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Reporter: Martin Kolman <mkolman>
Component: yelpAssignee: Matthew Barnes <mbarnes>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity: high Docs Contact: Mark Flitter <mflitter>
Priority: high    
Version: 7.4CC: dking, james-p, jkoten, ovasik, pkovar, tpelka
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Regression
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Known Issue
Doc Text:
Yelp does not correctly display HTML formatted files In earlier versions of `yelp`, HTML formatted files could be displayed. With version 3.22, this functionality no longer works, returning an "Unknown Error" with the qualifying text "URL cannot be shown". There is no workaround at this time, as the problem may be related to architectural changes in `yelp` itself. System administrators should note that `yelp` does not support this use case and expects Mallard or Docbook data as input. Alternative methods for displaying HTML formatted content should be considered.
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2019-10-25 15:00:01 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 1456511    
Attachments:
Description Flags
yelp showing error message after an attempt to load a html file none

Description Martin Kolman 2017-04-18 17:10:37 UTC
Created attachment 1272388 [details]
yelp showing error message after an attempt to load a html file

Description of problem:
Looks like the yelp help viewer can't open html files when called from command line with path to the file, eq.:

yelp index.html

Both relative and absolute paths return the same error. The same thing happens also for plain-text and asciidoc files. DocBook files are loaded and shown correctly.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
yelp-3.22.0-1

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. wget www.example.com
2. yelp index.html

Actual results:
Yelp reports an error:

"Unknown Error" & "URL cannot be shown" (As can be seen on the attached screenshot).

Expected results:
The HTML content is shown correctly.

Additional info:
I think this used to work in the 7.0 or 7.1 timeframe, as there are HTML placeholders in the Anaconda help system, which yelp used to be able to display, but can no longer do so.

Comment 6 David King 2017-05-24 15:37:04 UTC
This is probably fallout from the WebKit2 port of Yelp, and is likely related to URI handling. There is currently no upstream fix, and any fix would probably not be trivial.