Re: Shortened titles in OMFs and Yelp

[Mikael Hallendal <micke codefactory se>]

lör 2002-07-13 klockan 00.20 skrev Eric Baudais:
> On Fri, 2002-07-12 at 10:51, Martijn van Beers wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 11:36:34PM +0000, Eugene O'Connor wrote:
> > > Some of the document titles are quite long, and this looks quite odd
> > > in Yelp. For example, in the Applications category, there is a
> > > GNOME Calculator Manual V2.0 document. Pat Costello, John F and
> > > Dan devised a way of using short titles in the OMF to prevent the
> > > appearance of long wrapped-around manual titles, as follows:
> > 
> > > * Truncate the text in the <title> tags down to only the application
> > >   name.
> > > * Record the real title in <comment> tags just before the <title> tags,
> > >   so that the real title does not get lost.
> > 
> > Ok, so this is completely backwards. OMF is meant to mark up metadata
> > about documents. A document title is a document title. you don't change
> > this just because a random help browser can't cope with the document
> > title being long.
> 
> I think truncating the title in the OMF file would be a big mistake. 
> When you truncate the title in the OMF file you lose valuable metadata.
> This metadata is lost for any tool which parses the title of the OMF
> file.  When you truncate the title in the OMF file you lose the version
> information and any identifying parts which would relate the title OMF
> file to the document's title.
> 
> > This is solely a Yelp problem, and it should be solved in Yelp, not
> > by changing the OMF.
> 
> A better solution is to truncate the title inside Yelp.  It is Yelp's
> responsibility to truncate the title if it is too long for Yelp to
> display.  We shouldn't alter the underlying OMF title to accommodate
> Yelp's problem with long document titles.  A lot of the long titles
> mainly due to adding "GNOME" and "Manual."  These words could be
> eliminated automatically by Yelp.

Just ripping out GNOME and Manual will probably make some title's look
totally b0rked. I think it has to be handled by both the OMF _and_ Yelp.
Also, Yelp doesn't only show GNOME documents.
 
So, the information must exist in the OMF so that it can be accessible
from Yelp. It would be nice if the OMF could contain a <short-title/> or
something like that.

If it is found Yelp uses that instead and otherwise uses the <title/>.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 
Mikael Hallendal                micke codefactory se
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