Re: About the Gnome Help browser

[Russell Nelson <nelson crynwr com>]

Marc Ewing writes:
 > It can be.  I think you are misreading things.  We will have man:
 > and info: (as well as others).  The question is only how they will be
 > implemented underneath.

Maybe treat it like a networking stack?  At the bottom layer you'll
have methods for fetching via ftp, fsp, http, and files.  Next layer
up will do macro substitutions (info: becomes file:/usr/info, man:
becomes file:/usr/man, searching MANPATH as needed), calls the right
transfer method code, and manufactures a MIME type if the transfer
method didn't give you one (e.g. text/nroff for a man page, or runs
/usr/bin/file for a file, and/or examines the extension).

And maybe the layer above that searches all the known system
documentation?  Or maybe that should be a transfer method:
search:keyword+keyword+keyword?

-- 
-russ <nelson@crynwr.com>  http://web.crynwr.com/~nelson
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