Re: using gnome-help-caller

[Mark Galassi <rosalia cygnus com>]

    Felix> The Right Way to start the browser in the way you want is
    Felix> to use CORBA. This is what gnome-help-caller does
    Felix> internally.

Sure, but you always want to wrap things up in a simple routine that
calls CORBA for you.

    Felix> My understanding of gnome-help-caller (from reading the
    Felix> sources) is that it is just an example program illustrating
    Felix> how to use CORBA for this purpose. You should be able to
    Felix> cut and paste its source code with minor alterations to do
    Felix> what you want.

    >> 1. Would the authors of gnome-help-caller mind if I add some
    >>    command line options for things like "--url-new-window" and
    >>    "--url-same-window"?

    Felix> gnome-help-caller provides a means of doing this already:
    Felix> you prepend the url with a '#' to use the "current" browser
    Felix> window and leave it off to start a new one.

I contend that it is cleaner to invoke it with an option (or even with
just the URL on the command line) than to pipe something to it.  That
way it can be used much more conveninetly as a filter.

    >> 2. gnome-core/help-browser/Makefile.am does not create a
    >> libgnome-help.*a library, but I think it could do so easily,
    >> since it already defines the macro

    Felix> This would be pointless given the CORBA interface. (o:

I think you are missing the point: I want to use the CORBA interface
by providing a nice wrapping library called libgnome-help.la which
includes those three or four files that go into building
gnome-help-caller.

If not, every program will have to duplicate all of gnome-help-caller!

You see, gnome-help-caller sits in the same directory as
gnome-help-browser, so it can link to those few files, but other
programs cannot because there is no library installed.

    Felix> BTW, Mark, are there any plans to develop stylesheets that
    Felix> convert DocBook into html for the gnome-help-browser in a
    Felix> consistent and distinctly "gnomey" way ?

That would be quite cute.  No plans yet.

    Felix> I have done conversions using plain vanilla Modular DocBook
    Felix> for Aisleriot (with largely mindless markups) and got
    Felix> reasonable ghelp.  However, Norm Walsh is trying to produce
    Felix> good API docs rather than online ghelp. There must be scope
    Felix> for developing new entities and DSSSL in the gnome cvs that
    Felix> would implement a ghelp "style" (and provide consistent
    Felix> makefiles as a spin off).

I agree. We should look in to it.