Unable to configure kioslave in konqueror for gzipped files

[tonip]

Hi

I have a problem that I can't seem to solve which is making it very difficult for me to view package documentation in gentoo.

Since gentoo installs all the package docs gzipped (for obvious reasons, and I think it's a good idea), I want to get konqueror to open them for viewing.

However, every time I click on a compressed doc (eg. README.txt.gz) in konqueror, I just get the "Open with" dialog popping up and no matter what application I choose it won't work. I've tried loads of things, including typing in various paths to executables and choosing options from the dialog. Still when I click on a .gzip or .gz either nothing happens or the busy cursor appears and hangs around for a minute or two before disappearing.

I don't know much about konqueror but I've tried reconfiguring the settings too (in Settings -> Configure Konqueror), setting the file association for applicaton "x-gzip" for both General and Embedding ... nothing seems to work.

I've seen loads of postings concerning konqueror and gzipped docs, and this particular thing seems to work for everyone else so I'm baffled as to why it's not working for me. (In fact most people are complaining that konqueror does decompress .gzip files for them, but they want to eliminate the two-step process involved or something like that. I don't mind two steps, I just want to get it to work somehow!)

Am I missing a component of konqueror - do I need to install ark or something? Should ark have been installed when I emerged the kde? Could my kioslave be misconfigured?

Any help/suggestions would be really appreciated ... I'm beginning to feel a bit desperate about this! I really want to avoid having to deal with zipped documention manually.

Thanks,
tonip

[zerojay]

You definitely need ark at the very least. Then you should be able to hit Open with Ark in the dialog box and hit "Don't ask me again" and it will always open directly in ark when you click on it. If you are using 3.4 b1, you have to install konqueror-ark.

[tonip]

Thanks for the info. This will probably sound dumb but how do I configure ark? It's not obvious to me in konqueror's "Open with" dialog how to choose ark.

I'm running kde 3.3.2 - although I didn't emerge the entire kde I'm pretty sure I emerged anything that should have included ark (kdebase kdeadmin, kdenetwork, kdeartwork, kdegraphics, kdemultimedia, kdepim & kdeaddons). And the arkplugin does seem to be installed - if I run the command 'ls -l /usr/kde/3.3/lib/kde3/*ark* | egrep -v bookmark' then I get:

[zerojay]

Configure Konqueror and look though the File Associations. That should be all you need.

[tonip]

Umm, I realise I must be being completely dumb here, but it's really not obvious to me what to do. I've gone through the Konqueror file associations a million times (including a number of tries before I posted ...).

I can find the 'known type' of "application/x-gzip" (which is, I assume, where I need to define the association?) and I can see the General and Embedding tabs. What I can't for the life of me do is see how to associate these with Ark.

Should it just be obvious? Or do I need to know where to find Ark? When I click on 'Add' (within Application Preference Order) how do I know what to choose? I've looked through every possibility and there doesn't seem to be anything there that even vaguely resembles 'ark' ...

I also can't seem to find any information on kioslave to try and figure out whether there's a problem with my kioslave. This seems like a really small thing (that no one else has problems with) -- so I'm a bit baffled as to why it's such a big deal on my specific system!

[bssteph]

[tonip]

Well this was a huge help and has at least shown that my KDE installation must be incomplete but I still don't know how to fix it.

I followed your instructions, adding 'ark -caption "%c" %i %m %U' (since there was no 'Ark' anywhere under the Application Preference selections, definitely not under Utilities). When I went onto the embedding tab, there was no option for an embedded viewer ark_part so I left that as Show file in separate viewer. After saving the settings (which seemed successful) and when I tried to view a .gz doc, I got the following error:

[zerojay]

It sounds like you don't have ark installed on your box. That's why this whole topic seemed kind of strange to me because if you have it installed, it has all the file associations set up for you properly by default which explains why everyone else has it working right, like you mentioned.

[tonip]

I agree, in some sense the topic does seem strange but I'm just very confused about something. When I first encountered this gzip problem, after looking around for information the first thing I thought was that maybe I don't have Ark installed. But the problem is that I can't seem to find out how to install it. I was under the impression that (prior to the 3.4 split e-builds) you couldn't install the components of KDE separately.

(A while ago) I did an 'emerge -s ark' and the only thing that looked relevant was the 3.4.0_beta1 version of kde-base/ark. It's hard masked. I'm new to all this and don't have much confidence dealing with masked packages. In any event I actually have KDE 3.3.2 installed so this doesn't seem relevant to me. If there had been a 3.3.x version of kde-base/ark available to emerge then I would have tried installing it already, but as mentioned above I thought you couldn't install it separately on 3.3.x (which would also explain why it doesn't show up in the emerge search). Or have I just got this all wrong? If anyone can explain to me where to get hold of Ark to install I'd be really grateful ...

[zerojay]

[tonip]

Aah, all is explained. So it was a small & silly thing after all ... had to be I guess.

Thanks for your patience - it's working now.