PDFs of the help are a long-time RFE, but for the past year we've been focused more on updating the help to 9 than doing that kind of infrastructure work.

You can't print from within Houdini's embedded browser (it's a bug in embedded Mozilla), but you can copy the URL from the address bar, paste it into Firefox, and print from there.

Matt

Please try putting this in the file $HOME/houdini9.0/scripts/123.py

import os

if “PYTHONCASEOK” in os.environ:
os.environ.pop(“PYTHONCASEOK”)

On Windows I believe HOME is “c:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\My Documents” so the file would be “c:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\My Documents\houdini9.0\scripts\123.py”.

You'll probably need to create the scripts directory and the 123.py file.

Thanks!

Matt

That certainly seems to indicate a/the problem. Apparently you have an environment variable PYTHONCASEOK set, and one of the modules used by the help server doesn't like it. This environment variable may have been set up automatically by a Windows-y python environment like ActiveState Python if you've ever installed it.

Can you check whether this environment variable is set in your system? (RMB My Computer > Properties > Advanced tab > Environment Variables) Do you know if you need this variable set for something else?

One of the gurus is working on how to automatically unset this variable in the environment Houdini runs in, which should help.

Thanks!

Matt

It's hard to tell from the movie exactly what's going on, but it seems like the help server isn't starting at all. Which is weird.

If you have a second, could you please try this:

Choose Start > All Programs > Side Effects Software > Houdini 9.0.xxx > Command Line Tools

CD to “c:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\HoudiniXXXX\houdini\scripts\python”

Type “hython start_server.py”

Thanks!

Looks like I spoke too soon … a script to generate HTML turns out to be harder than I thought currently, because there are lots of places that assume the server is there to do certain things. I guess we'll have to concentrate on getting your server working properly…

Forgot, also check out the “H9 Blog” link http://www.sidefx.com/blog [sidefx.com] … that's where most of the videos on the Houdini start-up window come from.

Hi Werwack,

Sorry I haven't devoted enough time to this, I've been distracted by other things at work.

Did you turn on “Remember this decision” and click “Allow” in that dialog that pops up? That's necessary until we figure out some scripting issues in the embedded browser.

I'm not sure why it doesn't work at home… sorry if I'm asking you to repeat yourself, but can you see the documentation in a normal browser at http://localhost:48626/ [localhost] when Houdini is running?

You can view the videos on the web at http://www.sidefx.com/tutorials [sidefx.com] . You can start with the “Houdini 9 Interface lessons”. The docs aren't so great for learning yet anyway… we're spending time right now just getting the reference material up-to-date for the new Houdini 9 interface

I'll post a script to this thread today that will let you convert the wiki-formatted docs into HTML files so you can read them without the server running if that's the problem (been meaning to do that for a while).

If you have any motivation left to try to fix this problem, could you please email me directly at matt@sidefx.com so we can do some troubleshooting?

Thanks,

Matt

Sorry, forgot to say, if the help isn't working, you can still try checking out the example files under $HFS/mozilla/documents/examples/nodes/. Some of them are .cmd (HScript) files, some are OTLs you can load and then instantiate the object node inside.

Thanks for the info.

I just realized the tracebacks you're getting are due to the “user contributed notes” feature. I'll try to make it smarter about not trying to get notes from behind a firewall in a future version.

Copying things over from one install to another won't help. We plan to put the docs online at some point. In the meantime, can you please tell me more about the setup where the docs won't work, what you're trying to do that doesn't work, whether you have a firewall running at that location, etc. The more information the better.

Thanks very much.

Matt

The first page of the “startup” help downloads the list of available videos from sidefx.com every time it opens. The error you're getting seems to mean that that it tried to download the list of videos but it timed out, presumably because it couldn't see sidefx.com.

Not saying I know what to do about it…

By the way, when you had no docs at all, was it on 64 bit windows?

h9 still is very space inefficient compared to h8. specifically, parameter panes are v inefficient (especially in the vertical)

I don't think it's nearly as big an issue as that. The vertical difference between the two parameter editors is negligible in the header area, and would probably be equal if we switched to small (16x16) icons in the name/gear/info row instead of medium sized ones.

The text areas are bigger to make the textboxes easier to hit, and so you don't have the text butting right up to the border and looking like crap. Even so the difference doesn't amount to a whole lot in this example. And for people who prefer less humane UI in exchange for showing more parms at once, that's what the UI scale is for.

Answers to b. and c.: Yes, but not yet. There should be a script to start up the help web server included with Houdini. And the help browser in Houdini has a preference (though it's not obvious in the UI right now) to get its help from a central server. These things will be fixed up and documented in the next few weeks.

Do you mind if I use this as the basis for the online help?

Nope, sounds like a bug. I'll try to figure it out. Thanks!

winkel
I have found no files with the name “lucene” and how will I be informed about a fixed version?

Maye I missunderstood something

If you go to the Download section of the sidefx.com website you should be able to download nightly builds of Houdini 8. Build 562 or later should have the fixes in them.

Upgrading should also take care of the searching problem.

winkel
Good morning world,

am I the only one that can't search with Houdini 8.543 on Win2000? Java J2S“ Runtime Environment 5.0 is running but I can't search! The error message is:

”Lock obtain timed out:Lock@C:\……"

That's odd - I think that can happen if Houdini or hbrowser crashes while in the middle of searching. Look in the temp directory and/or in $HFS/mozilla/chrome/*.index for files with names that start with “lucene-” followed by an MD5 hash – these are lock files, and you can delete them.

winkel
On the other side I'm unable to open the example files inside. I allways got the message:

"The file /content/examples/….xml?examples.html cannot be found. Please check the location and try again.

(after searching … I can't find them)

This is fixed in the mainline, I need to backport the fixes to Houdini 8. Should be done today!

Sorry for the problems,

Matt

Love it! I don't suppose you have SVG for it…

They're all there in 476 on Windows. I'll check on Linux.

First off, let me apologize for taking so long to get the new OVP (One Vex Page) technology in there. No excuses, I was just dumb and let it drop off my radar.

As I mentioned in another thread, the problem with arg1, arg2, arg3, arg4 is that those signatures were either not in the old documentation or incorrect in the old documentation, so I wasn't able to “parse forward” the old argument names. The old help was the only place to get argument names, because the source code doesn't know about argument names (it just parses argument lists by position). So really, this is dependent on Mark finding time to create a table of signatures and argument names. I realize how sucky the arg1, arg2, etc. thing is, so I'll try to insert a task in his queue.

I don't see the margin problem in the latest internal builds, I may have forgotten to backport a stylesheet change to the Houdini 8 baseline. ops:

Mario: I'll try to make a standalone “VEX Language” reference that more closely approximates the old setup (i.e. I'll include or point to the change notes, compiler reference, etc. from the “one page”). I just want to double-check you know you can access the VEX help outside Houdin by pointing Firefox at $HFS/mozilla/help/content/vex/vex_all.html (the One Page) or $HFS/mozilla/help/content/vex/vex.xml (the top page of the VEX XML help).

Could you give me some more information about the problem? Where are those URLs coming from?

Thanks!

Matt