Re: jrb's help ideas

[Gregory Leblanc <gleblanc linuxweasel com>]

On Mon, 2001-09-03 at 13:58, David Merrill wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 03:52:50AM -0400, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> > "Rebecca J. Walter" <rjp mail tele dk> writes:
> > 
> > > i have one addition.  this help browser should be capable of loading an
> > > average help file in under 15 seconds on a typical user machine.
> > 
> > <snip>
> > 
> > I don't think anyone wants to wait 25 seconds for a help-browser to
> > popup.  Recent versions of nautilus are much improved speed wise.
> > Nonetheless, I think that there is likely to be lighter help browser
> > available so that people have an option if needed.  That's the point
> > behind the spec.
> 
> The whole `help browser' concept is flawed. Why can't the help be made
> available via http so any web browser can be used? Hell, you could
> write it in perl or python if you wanted.
> 
> I'm both a gnome and a kde user -- I go back and forth depending
> on what I'm doing. I don't want to see my system help changing
> depending on which desktop I'm using. I really don't want to learn two
> help systems. And, I'm often not using a desktop at all, and I still
> need to get to help on the console.
> 
> Providing help at the console is *not* *optional*.

Having help available at the console is not optional.  GNOME is a
graphical environment.  How often are you going to want to look at the
Evolution docs when you're not running at least X, if not Evolution
itself?  Check out xml.apache.org, cocoon seems to be just what you're
talking about.

Since GNOME is a desktop platform, we really can make some assumptions
that can't be made with "web publishing", which is what David is really
interested in.  We can take a few shortcuts because we're a desktop, and
these may allow us to deliver more features in less time.  In the end,
web publishing may be the way to go, but I think that in the GNOME 2
timeframe, it's out of the question.  As always, IMHO, and YMMV, and all
that crap.  
	Greg