Re: help browser plan

[Miles Lane <miles megapathdsl net>]

On Mon, 2001-11-26 at 16:21, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Can someone fill me in on the plan for help browsing in GNOME 2? I've
> seen various ideas floating around, but we should make a decision if
> we haven't.
> 
> If we're going to use a standalone browser, we should consider
> dropping the help components from Nautilus - that will make Nautilus
> smaller and eliminate some code we have to worry about. At the same
> time, if we're going to use a standalone browser, we need to decide
> what it is for sure and start working on it ASAP.
> 
> If someone's all over this and already decided, just let me know what
> the plan is. ;-)

Please take a look at the screenshots here:

	http://www.geocities.com/miles_lane/

These are shots of the Help system bundled into VisualStudio.NET.
There are several things I like about this system.  It relies
on Explorer's ability to have plugged in rendering code and UI
code.  The help system appears to be implemented as a set of
UI extensions that get loaded into Explorer when it is launched
with certain flags and is pointed to XML and other files that
define the UI presentation (where things get docked and so on)
and the content structure.  The other nice thing about this
implementation is that it means that for a given help context,
only the needed UI widget code gets loaded, reducing memory
footprint and providing maximal flexibility.  

Is anyone up for implementing a similar system for Gnome?

Our current help browsers are way too under-featured and 
inflexible.  

	Miles