Alternate Proposals to Nautilus

[Eric Baudais <baudais okstate edu>]

On Sat, Aug 11, 2001 at 03:48:29PM +0200, Rebecca J. Walter wrote:
> I personally like the GIMP help browser and it isn't heavy.  I won't
> even install nautilus on my machines.  If you require users to use
> nautilus for help, many of them will run away screaming and go find
> another desktop.  Maybe a look at the GIMP help browser could help adapt
> things for GNOME.

I think that restricting the help to a single browser is a big mistake.  The 
reason Nautilus was used is Nautilus was there and people were willing to 
help put the code for the help into it.  Was this a mistake?  Maybe, maybe 
not.  If Nautilus keeps being optimized so it can run on a slower machine 
(300Mhz/64MB) then the decision wasn't so bad.  Basically I'm saying that 
Nautilus was the appropriate place to *start* with the GDP's own help system.
 
> > On 12 Aug 2001 00:17:11 -0500, Kevin Breit wrote:
> > - Nautilus, in itself, is a heavy program (don't deny it).  Back at
> > Ximian, I could tolerate reading documentation in it.  But here on this
> > 300Mhz/64MB box...well, I want help, not my disk to swap.  As the end
> > user, I don't want to wait 30 seconds for my help stuff to show.  The
> > average computer user has the attention span of 15 seconds before you
> > lose them (look at me for an example ;).  While a lot of us aren't on
> > such old hardware as myself, I think a good portion of us...are.
> > 
> > - This is probably a solvable problem.  But, it's how we treat the
> > side bar.  If you go more than 2 or 3 levels into the tree in the Help
> > tab, you need to stretch out the side bar.  This is a nuisance for the
> > user.  Then when you make it wider, it's too big to be a side bar, and at
> > this point, arguably, deserves its own window or frame, not a side bar.

A possible solution to the side bar problem is have Nautilus enlarge the side bar
to the longest entry on the highlighted level.  When the actual manual is 
displayed, Nautilus will reduce the side bar in order to see the manual.

> > - I'd really like to see ghb2 be released.  I'm sure Greg is dying here.
> > Seriously though.  From what I can tell, ghb ISN'T a big piece of code.
> > It seems to be basically a window with HTML rendering widgets.  I like
> > this idea.  Why don't we make a BASIC help browser.  Or how about lets
> > take a que from Apple Computers?  It's its own application.  It'll open
> > up in its own window.  It'll have its own searching, categorization, doc
> > viewer, etc.  Wana embed it in your application?  Good, it's all
> > bonoboized.

I don't think that making an application to view the help manuals is a good 
idea.  Why not reduce the idea and the bloat.  Make an application which 
just displays the help tree, performs searches, does indexing and other 
things.  When the user needs to have the documentation displayed, the 
application convert the documentation to html and display it in the user's 
default web browser.

> > Why do this?  We can do a help system...the right way.  We can probably
> > design the UI ourselves (with input of course).  We can make it run on
> > older and newer hardware alike.  We won't be bound to Nautilus or
> > whatever other things are there.  The user not want help at all?  Great,
> > don't install it AT ALL!

The problem with making a new application is finding a hacker to code it.  
This is not an easy task.  We've had multiple hackers code the 
gnome-db2html[1-3] back end.

> > 
> > Kevin Breit
> > 

All this discussion is based on the flaws of Nautilus serving as the Gnome's 
front-end help system.  I think if Nautilus doesn't get any smaller then we 
need to look at some alternatives for a new front-end.  Yet if Nautilus does 
get smaller it is a good place for the help browser's front-end.

Eric Baudais