using gnome-help-caller

[Mark Galassi <rosalia cygnus com>]

Dudes, I have a (for now ugly) hack to try to display
context-sensitive help in a GNOME application I'm writing.

I haven't figured out if there is a proper way to do it, but I
remember seeing a program called gnome-help-caller, so I played with
it and discovered that I can do

	system("echo URL | gnome-help-caller");

and it will start a new window with the URL open.

This begins to get there, but I have a few questions:

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"?

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

ORBIT_HELP_CLIENT_SOURCES   = $(ORBIT_HELP_COMMON_SOURCES) \
			      help-browser-stubs.c

   One could add something like the folliwng (I haven't tried this at
   all):

   lib_LTLIBRARIES = libgnome-help.la
   libgnome_help_la_SOURCES = $(ORBIT_HELP_CLIENT_SOURCES)

   and build a libgnome-help.la library, which applications could use
   to not have to do a clumsy system() call.

   So the question is: do the help-browser authors mind if I attempt
   to create such a library?

3. What are the goals of the help-caller?