Re: Enhancement of Gnome Help Browser

[Tom Gilbert <gilbertt tomgilbert freeserve co uk>]

* Elliot Lee (sopwith@redhat.com) wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Peter Recore wrote:
> 
> > I am interested in helping out with the enhancement of the GHB.  I
> > noticed on the status page that there no one currently "owns" the
> > issue.  My only concern about committing to do it is that of time - I
> > would like to do this work in an academic context - ie, to fulfill a
> > design project that I must do before I graduate.  While this will not
> > affect the actual code written, it would affect the time scale.  I
> > believe I could add searching capability by Mid-November, but I am not
> > sure if I could embed Gecko as well, which seemed to be the other
> > major enhancement needed. Would it be sufficent to get the search
> > features in with this release, and then work on the better rendering
> > engine for the next release? The thing I like about this project is
> > that it is rather self contained and well defined, which makes it
> > suitable as an academic project.
> 
> I think the first thing that needs doing is requirements/design for the
> "ultimate" help system, and then deciding how the existing code base could
> be used to achieve that goal. DrMike would be a good person to discuss
> this with, since he coauthored the existing one.
> 
> > But on that note, if there is some other long term ( next 5-6 months)
> > project that is relativley self contained and involves both design and
> > coding, I would be interested in that as well.
> 
> Having someone manage the whole help system project would be very helpful.
>:-) We need work on context-sensitive help and user-annotatable
> documentation, for example. You could also cooperate with Tom Gilbert on
> his libGuide (nom?) project.
> 
> -- Elliot					http://developer.gnome.org/

Please do ;-)

Head over to
http://wwwtomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk/libguide.html
to see what we're up to.

There's lots to do if anyone wants to help.

(I won't be too offended if you choose not to ;-)

I want libguide to integrate with whatever the next help system turns
out to be, as much as possible, so whatever you choose, I'd like to
hear about it, so I can factor it into libGuide development.

I'd also like to get involved in the next generation help browser, and
my hopes would be to include:

o Direct parsing and display of DocBook XML.
o User annotation as suggested by Elliot
o Context sensitivity (greatly eased under a UNIX OS, thanks to the
  process list, lsof, etc, etc.
o Nifty searching using query language (searching much easier using
  XML)
o Stylesheet support?
o Text-based 'emergency-assistance' interface (like the one the Guide
  will eventually provide).
o Direct links into the interactive Guide help system.

But this may be too much for the timeframe :(

[Nobody ever told me off for not being ambitious enough ;-)]

Tom.
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