Re: What an Help browser should give

[Mikael Hallendal <micke codefactory se>]

fre 2002-02-22 klockan 15.10 skrev José Fonseca:
> Mikael,
> 
> On 2002.02.22 13:49 Mikael Hallendal wrote:
> > fre 2002-02-22 klockan 14.07 skrev José Fonseca:
> > 
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I'm the main-author and maintainer of DevHelp and I'm also developing
> > the new help browser for GNOME 2.0 (Yelp).
> > 
> 
> Where can I get more information about Yelp?

Hmm .. it's in yelp module in GNOME CVS.
 
> I want to be able to browse trhough documentation either trhough TOC, 
> keyword search, or even full-text search.

DevHelp currently does all of this except full-text search.
 
> I summary, I want something as the Windows HTML Help. I already made a 
> script for converting texinfo to .CHM when I used gnu/unix utilities on 
> Windows and I miss that functionality now that I switched to Linux. It 
> takes me so much time to get a reference of a function e.g., because I 
> have to fire up the browser, go to the documentation directory/website and 
> search myself for the information I'm looking for.

Sounds very much like DevHelp will be the best choice for you.

> > About GNOME documents for users is that they are already in XML-docbook
> > so Yelp will have TOC and index-searching available. DevHelp has that
> 
> For curiosity, does Yelp renders the DocBook documents in realtime? Isn't 
> this slow?

It's somewhat slow yes, that's why we are thinking of implementing some
kind of caching.

> And what about non-XML-docbook documents? I would want not only the GNOME 
> API documentation, but also e.g. Python or any other documentation I may 
> wish there, _with_ the same navigation abilities.

This sounds like something for DevHelp (which currently only renders
HTML).

What you do is you create a XML file describing the HTML-document
(Python, GNOME, libc, and a lot of other documentation is already
available for DevHelp).

There are some scripts in misc/ in DevHelp that helps you create those
XML files. You should mail Johan Dahlin (or bug him on IRC, nick:
jdahlin) if you need help using those scripts. His email is
jdahlin telia com

> If Yelp is also the successor of DevHelp then I'd prefer to help on its 
> development, but if it's not then I would like to get DevHelp CVS access 
> to be able to add these features myself. I already posted some patches 
> there...

Yelp is not the successor of DevHelp. Yelp is for user documentation
(like, how do I use Evolution) and DevHelp is for API
document-browsing/searching.

I noticed that you have sent patches, haven't had time to look at them
yet, will try to do it in the weekend. After a while we can fix so that
you have commit-right directly to DevHelp, for now send patches.
 
Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 
Mikael Hallendal                micke codefactory se
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