VASSAL Dropdown Help menu- PDF files not opening

[cholmcc]

@Paulxkrs1

…
I was looking for pdf files as well and couldn’t find any when I went into edit mode. I added a link to a pdf file in the help drop down menus and that created a folder with a PDF file in the temp folder. Clicking on a link where no file is linked just creates an empty folder.

I’m not sure I entirely get what you did or see. Did you,

1. Edit the Wing Leader module in the Vassal editor
   • Added a PDF Help File to the help menu with a PDF file
   • Added a PDF Help File to the help menu without a PDF file
2. Saved your modifications to the module
3. Open the module in the Vassal player
   • Clicked the newly added help entry with a PDF file attached
   • Clicked the newly added help entry without a PDF file attached
     What happened in either of these cases?

Perhaps you could take another module, say Anzio Beachhead (by yours truly), which does contain a PDF file, and then try to open that through the Vassal player (Help→Show rules for the Anzio Beachhead), and then see if you see the PDF file open up.

• If the PDF file is shown, then the problem is certainly not with Vassal.
• If the PDF file is not shown, then please report any error message and the content of errorLog (see How to report problems).

@Paulxkrs1

Question: When you select the Wing Leader VASSAL Module Notes entry in the Help, do you then see a new page in your Web-browser?
No. Nothing opens in my browser.

But I’m still not seeing the html files on screen when I click on the link in the drop down menu.

Did you check all running browser (Edge, Chrome, Firefox, …) instances to see if a new tab was opened up? Vassal may not necessarily focus the browser nor raise it to the foreground.

@Paulxkrs1

I can open them manually by going to the temp folder.

I guess the temporary folder is

C:\Users\paulr\AppData\Local\Temp

Assuming that is correct, and the created sub-directory is something like

vassal_12345678\123456789\VASSAL\help\Wing_Leader_VASSAL_Module_Notes\

with the file module-notes.html in it.

If so, then

• press Win+R (Windows key on the keyboard held down and then press R).
• In the dialog box that pops up, type

   cmd
  

  This will open up a terminal window (typically a black background with gray text in it), which displays a command prompt a la

  C:\> 
  

• In that command prompt, type

  C:\> start C:\Users\paulr\AppData\Local\Temp\vassal_12345678\123456789\VASSAL\help\Wing_Leader_VASSAL_Module_Notes\module-notes.html
  

  and watch what happens.
  • What should happen, is that a browser window or tab will open up showing the file module-notes.html. If that is the case, then something truly odd is going on, and we’d need to do a much deeper dive.
  • What can happen, is that no window or tab is opened and there will be some error message reported in the terminal window. If this happens, then double-check that you have typed the correct path to the module-notes.html file above. If the path is correct, then the error message should give some indication as to what is going on.

Yours,
Christian