Re: PROPOSAL: Help File Format Standardization

[<nuke bayside net>]

On 10 Aug 1998, Peter Bortas wrote:

> Bowie Poag <bjp@primenet.com> writes:
> 
> >  The UISG proposes that..
> > 
> >  o All GNOME Application Help Text is to be written in HTML.
> > 
> >  o Why HTML? Simple. Plenty of authoring tools, its an accepted
> >    standard, its portable, extensible, flexible, and clean. It
> >    will also make the transition path for KDE developers a little
> >    easier, once they've realize the error of their ways and start
> >    developing for GNOME. ;)
> > 
> > Yes, I know about docbook.
> > 
> > Agree or Disagree?
> 
> Disagree. DocBook is already decided upon if I remember correctly.

i agree with Bowie on the grounds that HTML is by far more widely known than
DocBook. forcing all help pages written in something unfamiliar to most
programmers is not a good way to get lots of help written. not only does the
gnome help browser already support html, but many other programs parse it in
their daily duties (pine, midnight commander, web browsers).

i'm saying this mainly because i, like many other programmers, don't like
learning a new markup language (if that's what DocBook is, i honestly don't
know) to explain how my program works. i'm also assuming around 99% of the
people in this list know some basic HTML, which is likely just enough to write
some help pages.
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