Re: Gnome Help 2.0

[John Fleck <jfleck inkstain net>]

Jorge -

Good questions. I'm cross posting to the gnome-doc-list, where others
can chime in.

On Tue, Jul 17, 2001 at 12:46:30AM -0300, Jorge Luiz Godoy Filho wrote:
> 
> I have some questions on that idea, and I don't know if you're the
> right person to ask. I'll ask it here but feel free to tell me to ask
> them to somebody else or at somewhere else. 
> 
> 
> 1. What are the advantages, to the end user, of having (DocBook) Gnome
>    Documentation converted on the fly to something Gnome Help can
>    read? Why not just generating HTML ('make docs') files and
>    displaying them?
> 

This is a decision made some time ago, but recently hashed over again:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2001-June/msg00031.html

> 1.1. How to locate DSSSL stylesheets? Or we'll be restricted only to
>      Norman Walsh's default stylesheets? (Honestly, I think they
>      aren't enough and always need some customization to reflect
>      project decision -- such as TOC, TOC level, CSS stylesheets,
>      admonitions images, new processing directives, etc.)
> 

Well, we've only wandered into the quagmire of proliferating
stylesheets in the last couple of days. My original intention was to
make *a* custom stylesheet for all DocBook docs, others have argued we
need multiple ones to uniquely display KDE, LDP, etc:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2001-July/msg00108.html

> 2. Has somebody made measurement tests and performance tests with this
>    conversion? Are these tests results available?
> 

No, only informally. There are some concerns, and caching is an option
being actively discussed.

> 3. Is there going to be some kind of cache? In what way that cache
>    differs from previously generated files (as I've asked on 1)?
> 
> 4. How are XREFs treated between documents?
> 

You mean an xref to a separate document?

> 5. If I have a URI in my document that points to a website, will my
>    user be able to click on it and have it displayed? (LDP documents
>    have lots of links of this kind)
> 

Yeah, if you're viewing the help in a browser that supports it. We'll
pass along the link as a regular html link.

Thanks for the questions.

Cheers,
-- 
John Fleck
jfleck inkstain net (h), http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/