gnome-help thoughts.

[David Wheeler <wheeler ida org>]

After looking at the gnome-help-browser I have a few comments.
Problem is, I don't know who to send my thoughts to - I hope this
mailing list is the right forum.

Anyway, here are a few thoughts, in the hopes they'll be useful.

1. New URL formats need to be defined so that other web browsers
   can be modified to also support the GNOME help information.
   The help browser is basically a partial web browser.  Like text editors,
   different people will have different preferences in what web browser
   they can use -- I see no reason why I must be forced to use the
   gnome browser just to view some help information.
   For example, some may want to use lynx (so they can use the help
   without a GUI) or Netscape (it might be more featureful or familiar).

   Thus, anything that's being generated (like tables of contents or
   query results) should be transformed into a URL of some form; then other
   browsers can be modified to support those URLs.  Also, the prefix "toc:"
   should be renamed; that makes sense in a help browser but not in a
   general-purpose browser.  How about "help:"?
 
   Then another browser could be modified to support this
   (lynx in particular, since having a help system is useful when
   X isn't working!).

   Once implemented in two browsers, it would make sense to propose
   these "local extensions" to the IETF or W3C as an RFC.

2. The fact that documents are in texinfo, man, a file in a directory,
   a web site, or some other format is an artifact completely 
   irrelevant to most users.  The man, texinfo, etc. files should
   be strongly interconnected so that texinfo files link to man pages,
   man pages to texinfo, and all to files in other directories
   (e.g. /usr/doc).  If there's a URL in the files, there should be
   a link created to that, too (e.g. to home pages of various
   programs for more information).  This could be managed by the programs
   that translate to HTML, and would be helped if the help viewer could
   correctly display a directory's contents (e.g. given a directory it
   would list its contents as a list of clickable items).

3. Make it clearer where to send comments like this.

Hope these ideas are useful!