Re: Plan for the YelpDocument branch

[Don Scorgie <Don Scorgie org>]

Hi,

On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 12:50 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote:
<snip lots of interesting stuff>
> 
> YelpWindow will, of course, have to be changed considerably to
> use YelpDocument.  Preferably, we'd want a factory API where
> we can hand it a URI/filename and just get a YelpDocument back.
> Since a YelpDocument could hold whatever metadata it needs to,
> there's really no reason for YelpDocInfo.  (At least not in the
> header files.  A small struct might be convenient in the TOC.)

Excellent.  The YelpDocInfo stuff is causing me some problems right
now ;)

> 
> I had envisioned the following document types:
>   YelpDocbook: a single DocBook document
>   YelpInfo:    a single info document
>   YelpInfoToc: the TOC listings for info pages
>   YelpMallard: a single Mallard document
>   YelpMan:     a single man page
>   YelpManToc:  the TOC listings for man pages
>   YelpSearch:  a singleton document managing all searches
>   YelpToc:     the main TOC listings
> 
> Clearly, the three bits that deal with TOCs needs to be
> coordinated with Don's Spoon work.  But the rest of them
> should be largely independent of that work.

The Spoon stuff should remove virtually all the parsing code in the
TOCs, so each YelpDocument should only require a couple of simple calls
(see the yelp-spoon branch yelp-toc-pager.c for how simplified the main
TOC stuff becomes ;) ).

How is the section-tree view handled in the New World Order?  Also, (I
know you've probably not thought about this, but) how would document
printing happen?  Right now, it's special-cased and drawn to an
off-screen html widget, which is kind-of hacky [1].  Would it be
possible in this scheme to make a request for the entire document to be
handled and passed back as one huge chunk of html?  This would simplify
things once more (and hopefully also allow info document printing).

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say (apart from saying the info parser
may need a bit of work to fit in better).  I think the best way forward
would be for me to get the TOC stuff done in yelp-spoon branch
(hopefully before) the new TOC pagers are started.  From there, I hope
it shouldn't be too much work to integrate.  Although, I think there's
more overlap than I'd like.

Don
[1] Alright, its horrifically hacky and should be done.  Ever.