Re: KDE/Gnome : suggestion for easy peace pipe

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* David T. Bath (bathd edipost auspost com au) wrote at 13:55 on 21/10/00:
> Hi all,
> 
> While we are discussing KDE/Gnome peace talks, I tried to think
> of a suitably non-religious, relatively easy way to get some
> "points on the board" for KDE and Gnome, showing the user communities
> (whether they lean one way, the other, are ambidextrous, or are
> trogs wanting both KDE and Gnome to fail) that there is progress.
> 
> Consider the KDE and Gnome documentation tools:
> 	Both look at man pages
> 	Both look at info pages
> 	Both look at their "own" specific format.
> 
> Wouldn't it be nice if the gnome-help-browser could search and
> display KDE documentation, and vice-versa?
> 
> And just imagine if the help browsers from both systems are
> released as "ecumenical versions" (as far as the data they can
> read) in a joint announcement of kde and gnome.
> 
> The other thing worth talking to the KDE folks about is their
> experience dealing with Qt1->2 and KDE1->2 hassles.  I think
> anything they say about this would be useful as we get closer
> to Gnome 1->2 migration time.

I would like to point out that there is now a 'ScrollKeeper' project that is
an "independant" (non-GNOME) project that will be used to store metadata on
help documents (for example: the document "Category").

Also, I am working on a project called 'gnome-db2html2' which is a DocBook 2
HTML converter (unlike db2html, this application covnerts "on-the-fly"). Right
now it currently has few GNOME-isms (it uses one gnome function to get
pixmaps) but in the future, I do not see why this can't be a separate project
(right now it is in Nautilus) that both KDE and GNOME can benefit from (it
depends on glib quite a bit though).

The new metadata framework SHOULD make it easier for help files to co-exist.
Once the metadata framework is in place, you will not need to "hunt" for the
help files, you will just query the 'ScrollKeeper' database for the location
of a particular help file and it will tell you. Also Scrollkeeper should give
you information to be able to generate an 'Index' of docs (i.e. get me all KDE
docs, get me all GNOME docs, get me all docs that begin with 'A', get me docs
on the subject of "networking", etc.)

Regards,
Ali