Re: Proposal for GNOME-2.0 help system

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2001 at 08:37:57PM -0400, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> There are 3 proposed API calls for libgnome:
> 
> gboolean gnome_help_display         (GnomeProgram  *program,
>                                      char          *doc_name,
>                                      char          *link_id,
>                                      GError       **error);
> gboolean gnome_help_display_desktop (GnomeProgram  *program,
>                                      char          *doc_name,
>                                      char          *link_id,
>                                      GError       **error);
> gboolean gnome_help_display_uri     (char          *help_uri,
>                                      GError       **error);
> 
> The first two calls basically construct the appropriate URI, and then
> call gnome_help_display_uri [3].  The difference between the first two
> calls is that the first is used to display the help for the user
> documentation, while the second is intended to show installed help that
> comes with GNOME (such as the glossary).  One assumption made here is
> that this desktop documentation is installed with the same prefix as the
> gnome libraries and help-browser.
> 
> One thing about gnome_help_display is that it will try to create a
> relative ghelp URI if possible and fall back to an absolute one if
> necessary.  It will never try to create an index ghelp URI.

Implemented in foo-branch now.  However some issues.

1) We have no clue if the help browser successfuly opened the
   URL, so we can't exactly do a relative and fall back on absolute
   right now.  At least not when we're activating help with gnome-url.
   And since help might be installed somewhere where the help browser
   may not look, we must give absolute.  So the current code finds
   the file and does the absolute uri only.

2) The location of the desktop help wasn't specified in the RFP (or
   I missed it).  So currently it's implemented as
   <DATADIR>/gnome/help/<LOCALE>/.  Which is similar to the per app
   help path with app-id replaced by 'gnome'.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely
   once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
                       -- Abba Eban, 1970