Re: ANNOUCE: gTrouble - New project

[Tom Gilbert <gilbertt tomgilbert freeserve co uk>]

* Elliot Lee (sopwith@redhat.com) wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Sep 1999, Tom Gilbert wrote:
> 
> > gTrouble will be a flexible extensible trouble-shooting application,
> > reading guides from sgml files, and walking users through the
> > contents. An example sgml file is included at the bottom of this mail
> > to show the kind of thing I hope to achieve.
> > 
> > I wanted to check noone was doing anything similar, and to get some
> > feedback/suggestions _before_ I started, to save me re-doing stuff
> > later.
> 
> I haven't heard of anyone doing anything similar.
> 
> As far as I can imagine, there is nothing specific in the SGML syntax that
> requires a special application to view them. You could use pretty much any
> browser to go through them, they're just static pages with links between
> them.
> 
> Whatever you want to do is cool, but I wonder if you wouldn't like to take
> on the GNOME 2.0 help browser while you're at it. ;-)

Hmm. You (and DCM) make a good point. Maybe doing this as a separate
app is not such hot idea. I think I will look at the help-browser, and
how it could be extended (if that's ok).

DCM makes the point that DocBook should be able to cope with the
necessary extra information and that it would be bad to create a new
DTD for this. I don't know much about DocBook (or sgml in general, 
as I mentioned earlier) right now, so I'll have to get back to you 
after reading up. I would want to add a whole load of extra syntax
though, guide writers should have loads of flexibility.

I'm still up for implementing this though. (Undaunted so far).

A few good interactive walkthoughs could make a real difference to a
user's first Gnome experience, and avoid later frustration.

Tom.
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