Re: Gnumeric docs

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 12:37, Alexander Kirillov wrote:
> Malcolm is our hero 

More correctly, Malcolm is foolish and a sucker for punishment. :-)

> - but the fact that Adrian  couldn't get doc
> building right after spending *14* hours shows that something is
> seriously wrong with the way the build process is setup - or, at the
> very least, how it is documented. We need to do something about this.

It's not as bad as you think (unless you are Adrian). Having seen the
details of what is going on, part of the problem is that Gnumeric are
trying to maintain some backwards compatibility with the GNOME 1.4
install locations for the documentation. So the whole thing needs a bit
of customisation for them.

Some other parts of the problem look like false expectations (which can
be solved with a document) and something really whacky going on (which I
don't understand yet). 

> I'd volunteer to write a small tutorial, along hte lines of what used to
> be in GDP handbook if only I knew the stuff myself...

When everything goes smoothly, it's not too hard. The trouble starts
when things go weird or when you want to do something a little
non-standard. You need to quickly gain experience in multiple areas:
scrollkeeper's installation process, scrolkeeper's retrieval command,
libgnome's default path ideas (passed as parameter to
gnome_program_init() ), the help commands in libgnome and possibly have
some idea of how Yelp works under the cover.

I shall see if I can pull together some conclusions after looking at
this.

Malcolm