Documentation missing in AppImage

[OoMrFlibble]

In the old installer, there used to be some documents presented to the user at first run.

These are absent in the AppImage, and FlatPak.

[LW-archlinux]

It's not just the flatpak & appimage that doesn't have them anymore, sourcebuilds also don't have them.
1.92-maintenance still has the 3 pdf documents, master doesn't .

I'm almost certain this is an intentional chage to modernize the docs and ake updating them easier.
The Documentation and Documentation/doc sourcecode folders holds a bunch of markdown files that are used to generate something that's then submitted to readthedocs .

There should be a thread on the oolite forum about this, possibly on the oolite-PC subboard.

#546 and #554 are likely related to this change.

[OoMrFlibble]

Should there be some obvious clue to that for the novice user on first run, perhaps in --help too?

Maybe on the menu screen?

[oocube]

I see no reason why such documents should not be part of the downloadable stuff. When downloading 200+ MB those few kB do not really matter. Plus there is no hint users could go to readthedocs. See this post:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=305567#p305567

But there is another caveat: Consider the appimage to be one big executable. Where/how should the PDF documentation be packaged? We have no installer any more.

[OoMrFlibble]

I see no reason the docs couldn't be bundled in AppImage. While running, the AppImage contents are accessible as a mounted filesystem beneath /tmp. That also enables first run display of one or more docs. Clues to that might be appended to --help on appimage, along with the currently absent pointer to readthedocs. Perhaps overkill, but maybe add a cli option in FlatPak and AppImage versions to copy docs out of the app tree to a destination directory, or at least churn out the current temp path to them.

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On 13 May 2026 16:51:19 BST, oocube ***@***.***> wrote: oocube left a comment (OoliteProject/oolite#626) I see no reason why such documents should not be part of the downloadable stuff. When downloading 200+ MB those few kB do not really matter. Plus there is no hint users could go to readthedocs. See this post: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=305567#p305567 But there is another caveat: Consider the appimage to be one big executable. Where/how should the PDF documentation be packaged? We have no installer any more. -- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #626 (comment) You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Message ID: ***@***.***>

[oocube]

Nice idea! When populating the GameData directory, the documentation could be placed there as well. With that it will be available even when Oolite is not running. But it will only be available once Oolite has run at least once.

[OoMrFlibble]

Which is your first-run show the docs trigger :)

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On 13 May 2026 17:08:12 BST, oocube ***@***.***> wrote: oocube left a comment (OoliteProject/oolite#626) Nice idea! When populating the GameData directory, the documentation could be placed there as well. With that it will be available even when Oolite is not running. But it will only be available once Oolite has run at least once. -- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #626 (comment) You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Message ID: ***@***.***>

[mcarans]

I doubt the average user will unpack the appimage or run flatpak on the command line to look for the docs so they were made available online on readthedocs and mentioned in the README here: https://github.com/OoliteProject/oolite#playing-oolite. I had already created an issue to investigate making the docs available directly in the game: #571. I think that is where they should be.

[oocube]

I am afraid just mentioning the documentation location in the readme is far from enough. It is years since I stopped reading that file. There are enough users who would not even scroll that much just to follow a link labelled 'here'. The project's website contains anything about it, and somehow that is the main entry point for many users.

So hints where to find good documentation need to be distributed left right and center just so it is not missed.