Am Die, 2003-07-22 um 21.57 schrieb David Neary:
> Actually, I'm not sure I see the benefits in not having html as
> the primary format... Sure, we could go for a format which allows
> multi-node searching (like info only better), but html docs would
> have the added benefit of not needing to be local and still being
> usable.
What do you mean by "not needing to be local"? The problem is exactly
that the filenames have to be known in advance so we can link to them;
this means that for HTML the files have to be in a known place (defined
at compile time) and there has to be a mapping.
> And the user gets to choose what help client they use.
There's no problem at all using a normal browser to read the full docs
in HTML format. It simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me trying
to remote control a browser to feed it with correct links while at the
same time having the problems that
- a webbrowser is by design not the optimal tool to view online help
while working with the application
- a webbrowser cannot provide fulltext search over all documentation
since it doesn't see the whole text at once
> I'm not saying that a custom help browser is a waste of time -
> but do we have the time to do it? Surely starting with docbook or
> whatever and marking it up to html, with the possibility of doing
> funkier stuff later, allows us to have something, quickly?
That's exactly my point. Sorry to be negative here but I have the very
strong feeling that we will not get gimp-help-2 into adequate shape
until the projected date of release of GIMP 2.0 and as such it doesn't
make a whole lot of sense to me to bend over trying to somehow get the
transformation and the help-browser in place because it's a waste of
precious time when not knowing that it'll be used for a longer period of
time. The explanation I proviced about displaying HTML instead of
DocBook directly (still just for the online help!) should show why this
an inferior solution. I've a few more points in case someone wants to
discuss it over, but for me there's no point in supporting a quick hack
instead of a proper long term solution which the HTML one simply cannot
be, at least not in this form, and I haven't heard of a better one yet.
--
Servus,
Daniel
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