Re: What an Help browser should give

[Jose Fonseca <j_r_fonseca yahoo co uk>]

On Fri, 2002-02-22 at 14:29, Mikael Hallendal wrote:
> 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.
>  

Ok. I'll wait for Gnome 2 release then... (See below)

> > 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.
> 

Ok, good.

> > > 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
> 

I've saw those scripts and fully understand them. The whole process is
quite similar to the Windows HTML Help one. In fact what I want to do is
to make tools to generate these XML files directly from the sources
instead of the HTML files, as it is already done, e.g. in the case of
DocBook, for Windows HTML Help DocBook XML stylesheets in
http://docbook.sf.net .

But before I get into that I want to change the describing documents XML
specification to allow having more information, so that I won't have to
do the work twice.

> > 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.
> 

Ok. I'm really convinced to pursue DevHelp development then. I'm glad
because is a relatively small program so it's adequate to my rather
limited GTK knowledge.

> 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.
>  

That's fair. May I bug you directly when I have more, since you don't
follow the devhelp mailing list?

> Regards,
>   Mikael Hallendal
> 

Regards,

Jose Fonseca