gnome 1.4.1 help system

[Wayne Schuller <k_wayne linuxpower org>]

hi,

I know everyone is focussing on Gnome 2.0.

But I actually have a question about the Gnome 1.4 platform.

We are getting soooo many bug reports all the time about the gnome-help-browser
crashing. They are coming thick and fast. We are mostly ignoring them by marking
them as WONTFIX (see [1]).

Alot of the time this is problems in the gtk-xmhtml widget. Sometimes these can
be fixed by simple hacks (like 66913), other times it is more problematic.

So my question is: 

How hard would it be to update the gtkhtml port of gnome-help-browser to gtkhtml
1.0.0. (stabilised API). And then make gtkhtml the default, and make it a
dependancy for gnome-core (remember this is Gnome 1.4).

Does anyone else think this is worth the effort to make gnome-help-browser
stable?

Or are the problems in gnome-help-browser much deeper than just gtk-xmhtml?

Or should we make Nautilus the default url-handler for ghelp in the gnome
control-center?

I am happy to do the work of updating the port, I just need some knowledgable
maintainers to give me their opinion on the above issues.

I know we are getting a new help browser in gnome 2.0. But that is a long time
away for the users currently using gnome 1.4. Their distribution is more likely
to update them to the latest gnome-libs/core before it goes to Gnome 2.0.

And apparently we have a gnome 1.4.1 release coming, so we should try and fix
this for that release.

Please reply to gnome-libs-devel if possible.

I am not trying to start a flame-war, though that would be fun.

thanks,
Wayne

[1] These questions evolved out of a discussion I had with John Fleck at:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9293