Re: Notes on gnome-help-browser

[Marc Ewing <marc redhat com>]

Tom Tromey <tromey@creche.cygnus.com> writes:
> I tried the Gnome help browser for the first time tonight.  I have a
> few comments and suggestions.  I looked at the TODO list and didn't
> see these.  If it is too early for feedback, I apologize.

Not too early at all.  We're still going to be making a lot of
changes, but the more we hear about specific UI wants the better.
The UI has pretty much been slapped together as we test out all
the parts, and now we'll be cleaning it up.

> I ran "gnome-help-browser".  The default size is very large, much
> larger than I'd like.  However, I can't shrink the window (weirdly,
> fvwm tells me it is "0x0").

We'll check that out.

> I think the History button shouldn't be a toggle.  Pressing it should
> just pop up the history window.  I have other ways to get rid of
> windows.

That makes sense.

> I don't understand why I get a Contents window with each help browser
> window.  I think the contents window should be completely optional
> (and probably not shown by default).

Two reasons.  First (and the big reason) is that we aren't using
mico yet to send the help requests from the apps to the help browser.
This means that each time you select an item from an application help
menu you are running a new copy of the browser.  This will change
when we move to using mico.  The other "reason" is that the current
contents will probably be scrapped and rewritten (very soon) it's
not very efficient, and properly written it can provide some handy
things to the rest of the program (like help to figure out the magic
URLs).

> The Windows->Show history menu item interacts strangely with the
> History button.  The menu item should just be a simple command,
> though, like the history button.  "Contents" should appear on the
> Windows menu.

Both the toggle button in the toolbar and the toggle in the menu were
only put there to test out my gtk and gnome-app-helper additions :-).
And yes, we'll add the contents.

> There are various display bugs which I won't mention, on the theory
> that you probably know about them already.  If you'd prefer to hear
> about them, tell me and I'll send them.

Actually, could you write them into a BUGS file and commit it?  That
would be really helpful.

Thanks for checking it out!

-Marc