How do you go about reading CHM files on Linux? Luckily, a few CHM readers are available. If you have Qt/KDE installed, you can go for KchmViewer. If you are a Gnome fan, you can compile Gnochm. There is also XCHM but it is a pain to compile (because of so many missing libraries and third-party packages whose functionalities it uses). I could not get KchmViewer to run because I don’t have Qt-3.3 (I am still using KDE-3.1). Gnochm compiled successfully, but refuses to run due to missing Python modules that provide an interface to Gnome’s GConf (compiling which is a fuss in and of itself). I played with XCHM once. I think it will suffice to say I did not get anywhere with it.
Am I even reading CHM files on Linux? Hell yea! What am I using, if the above didn’t work for me? Archmage! It is a wonderful tool to convert CHM files into HTML. Additionally, it can listen on a port for requests and serve the CHM file in HTML, and also provide an AddHandler for Apache to make it recognise and display CHM files. Isn’t that cool, now? The only packages and libraries required for archmage to run are PyCHM and chmlib, which, unlike any of the three CHM viewers mentioned earlier, are a breeze to compile and set up.
6 Comments
Oh, well, i’ve successfully compiled both xchm and kchmviewer in Slackware (-Current) and it was dead easy…
So, no need for archmage here.
I believe if I had an updated distribution, I would’ve had success just like you. I think it is time enough to roll out an update.
I’d say as a personal opnion that KchmViewer is the best. But it has some problems displaying the table of contents as i’ve seen till now.
I tried Gnochm in Ubuntu 9.04, i think it’s buggy. Sometimes when i clicked… the application just closed and dissapeared. XChm and Firefox (with addons – CHM Reader) work just fine and stable.
Yeah, I’ve had the same problem with 9.04. With the KDE chm viewer i can’t open some .chm files docs and with Gnochm I would click on a new page and it dies like Hadi said.
emm. luv it