Re: new help browser

[Alexander Kirillov <kirillov math sunysb edu>]

On Wed, May 31, 2000 at 05:04:48PM -0500, Eric Baudais wrote:
> > c. Do we really want to markup *all* appearances of the word "device"
> > in all our docs so that the help browser can display the appropriate
> > glossary definition? And same for all other non-obvious terms, such as
> > shell, symlink,...? It seems like a terrible waste of time. Can
> > anyone suggest a better idea?
> 
> I think it would be appropriate to only have one definition for all
> identical words currently on the screen.  I'd like to see the glossary
> or index as a dynamic part of the doc.  So if symlink is on the screen
> there would be a definition some place on the screen.  If the user moved
> to the next page, and symlink wasn't in that page, the definition would
> disappear and be replaced by the appropriate definitions for words that
> were in that particular page the user was looking at.

The only problem with this is that then the help browser needs to grep
through all the words on screen and compare them with the glossary all
the time. Another version of the same idea is that  for each <sect1> (or the
whole document?) of a document, make a list of all the words in it
that might need explaining, so that when you read, say, a section on
GMC, in the left pane you have a list of words in this section that
appear in the glossary (symlink, mount point, etc); you can click on
any of them, and it will show you a definition? I think, it is a
better idea than actually having all occurences of the word symlink
somehow highlighted so that the reader needs to click on it.


Now if all the docbook wizards and developers could tell me if this
could be implemented...


Sasha