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Made a clean install of 24.04. When I click on the [question mark] Help icon on the dock, the "Ubuntu Desktop Guide" loads, but nothing is visible. The files are there, I can print them, but I can't see them. When I move the cursor around it changes to the Black Hand and when I click, the title bar changes. Everything seems to be working, except...the files do not show.

grantbow
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bblakely
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  • What happens when you change the theme? – Rinzwind Feb 07 '25 at 10:18
  • The behavior is very weird. The text is there but it displays text and background as all white. I confirmed you can see the document if you print to PDF. – grantbow Feb 07 '25 at 18:09
  • Rinzwind, I don't know how to do that. I changed the "View" to 'Dark" and got a black screen, evidently with black type and a black background, I'm surprised there isn't more talk about this. Maybe Ubuntu users don't need help! – bblakely Feb 09 '25 at 02:58
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    This looks like a flaw in the provided themes. Certainly this is something worth noting. Try to download another theme from here and report back – kanehekili Feb 09 '25 at 23:12

2 Answers2

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Using my theme the help page looks like this: 1

That might not be your favorite theme but it clearly shows that the provided themes have a flaw. You can install my "light theme" as well from here

kanehekili
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  • Great test result, thanks for the screenshot. This is a good clue about why this problem may be happening. – grantbow Feb 15 '25 at 03:30
  • I'm learning a lot about [tag:themes] from other questions and answers on the site. – grantbow Feb 15 '25 at 03:46
  • I didn't want to try this first because I'm unclear what changes might be made that might not easily be undone. The reinstall of the existing ubuntu-docs package must have fixed a bug in a theme somewhere or some kind of file dependency on a default installation. I have a second machine with a clean install that I can start trying to do a diff to find the actual cause in one of the ubuntu-docs package files or configurations before and after a reinstall of the ubuntu-docs package. – grantbow Feb 15 '25 at 15:32
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Reinstall the package ubuntu-docs

PingMaster
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  • Good idea, I will try this soon. To reinstall the package from the terminal the command is sudo apt-get --reinstall install ubuntu-docs. I hope this and/or related packages or commands will help fix and help identify the cause of this strange display behavior of the help system. – grantbow Feb 15 '25 at 03:27
  • It worked! I wonder why! – grantbow Feb 15 '25 at 15:21
  • looking inside the package there are no scripts it runs, just writes the files in various languages into /usr/share/help. If one of those files gets changed somehow a reinstall would fix it. The one dependency ubuntu-docs has gnome-user-docs also has no scripts. So where is the problem that gets fixed in the theme related bug we see after a default install? – grantbow Feb 15 '25 at 16:23
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    grantbow, thanks for the command line for a reinstall, however it did not work for me. Others are having similar problems - https://askubuntu.com/questions/1454571/some-application-guis-do-not-render-correctly-since-updating-to-22-04?rq=1 – bblakely Feb 16 '25 at 00:12
  • Somehow the ubuntu-docs package may be corrupted or misconfigured. Reinstalling the package restored all necessary files – PingMaster Feb 17 '25 at 05:09
  • I want to figure out the somehow part. – grantbow Feb 18 '25 at 17:02
  • bblakely that one looks a little different. – grantbow Feb 18 '25 at 17:03
  • a recent upgrade solved the problem. But now the screen doesn't display properly, my video card -Nvidia 470- is stuck on 1024x768 with no way to change it, but that's a different problem, not to be solved here. – bblakely Aug 15 '25 at 22:28