Web links integration in applications: bugs, translations, help...



        Hi,

 Distros, just like GNOME, have bug trackers, forums, support systems.
 GNOME and some distros have translation infrastructure.  These are
 usually not integrated into the end-user applications.

 For example a new user wanting to report a bug against Gedit would:
 1) fire his web browser to lookup where to report bugs
 2) open the relevant bug reporting page, look for the Gedit component
 3) file the actual bug description and details

 You can imagine the process is the same for translations fixes / new
 translations, help requests in forums, etc.

 Step 1) and 2) could very well be skipped would we integrate an URL
 link in each application "Help" menu (or a bug-buddy
 launcher).  That is, selecting "Help > Report a bug" would bring you to
 the relevant bug reporting page for this application, on your
 distributor's bug tracking system (or at GNOME's, freedesktop's, etc.
 depending on who the build comes from).

 Ubuntu has been doing such an integration with a system called "LPI"
 (Launchpad integration), and I think it's a generally useful concept
 which could be used by other distributors and by upstream apps. [1]
   I'm attaching a screenshot of Gedit's help menu on an Ubuntu system
 as an example.


 How do other people feel about such a system?  Would it make sense to
 integrate this in GNOME?
   Where should it go?  In the past, libgnomeui would have been a
 candidate for such stuff, but we try to drop this lib; I guess Gtk+ is
 where libgnomeui tends to move?


   Bye,

 [1] I don't think the implementation could be reused: it's a Python
 package implementing functions like getTranslateUrl() (hence directly
 accessible to Python apps) which is wrapped in a C lib starting a
 Python interpreter (for C apps); it basically transports the URL
 mappings and icons.
-- 
Loïc Minier

Attachment: gedit-lpi.png
Description: PNG image



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