Re: gnome-help thoughts.

[Tim Moore <tmoore tembel org>]

On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, David Wheeler wrote:

> 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!).

I have a better idea: instead of using custom URLs (which, btw, should be
prefixed with "x-" as in "x-toc:") would it be possible to adapt the dwww
system from Debian? The maintainer, Jim Pick, is an active Gnomer, so I'm
sure he'd be happy to help with that.

For those who don't know, dwww has pretty much the same goal as gnome-help
-- to provide uniform access to all of the documentation on the system.
The difference is that it uses a web server + CGI + normal web browser
instead of a custom web browser like gnome-help. It renders manpages and
info hierarchies in HTML. Then you can use any browser to read it, and can
read documentation off of any server that grants you access.

I don't use Debian, and I don't know a lot about how dwww works, so my
question for any debian users out there, and Jim Pick in particular, is
how tied to Debian and/or Linux is dwww, and would it be possible to use
it as a functional replacement for gnome-help?

> 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).
> 

Yes! And the documents should be presented in a unified tree, not
separate sections for each medium.

Tim