Re: gnome-help (yelp) and info/manual pages

[Toralf Lund <toralf procaptura com>]

Petri Kanerva wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 10:54 +0100, Toralf Lund wrote:
>  
>
> > Shaun McCance wrote:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > On Mon, 2004-12-06 at 10:00 +0100, Toralf Lund wrote:
> > >
> > >      
> > >
> > > > Shaun McCance wrote:
> > > >
> > > >        
> > > >
> > > > > On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 19:07 +0100, Toralf Lund wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >          
> > > > >
> > > > > > After upgrading to Fedora Core 3 w/ GNOME 2.8, I can no longer use 
> > > > > > commands like
> > > > > >
> > > > > > yelp info:cat
> > > > > >
> > > > > > or
> > > > > >
> > > > > > gnome-help man:cat
> > > > > >
> > > > > > to display info or manual pages. Why?
> > > > > >  
> > > > > >
> > > > > >       
> > > > > >
> > > > > >            
> > > > > In Gnome 2.6, the document transformation system was changed in Yelp.
> > > > > This resulted in much faster and nicer DocBook conversions, which is
> > > > > Yelp's primary purpose.  The existing man and info converters weren't
> > > > > using the new transformation system, so they were disabled.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >     
> > > > >
> > > > >          
> > > > Is this mentioned in the release notes???
> > > >   
> > > >
> > > >        
> > > Did you look?
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> > Of course I did...
> >
> >    
> >
> > > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2003-
> > > December/msg00008.html [ etc ]
> > >
> > > This has been discussed to death in every web forum, mailing list, IRC
> > > channel, newsgroup, barber shop, and coffee house on our planet and
> > > others.
> > >
> > >      
> > I admit I didn't follow the mailing lists etc. closely. Those aren't the 
> > *release notes*, though. These are the ones:
> >
> > http://gnome.org/start/2.8/notes/
> >
> > The most relevant part is the "changes" section, I'd say, i.e.
> >
> > http://gnome.org/start/2.8/notes/rnwhatsnew.html
> >
> >    
>
> Well, a bit late, but just wanted to say, that you are dead wrong in
> this one. Before hostile comments like this it's usually wise to get
> your own facts correct.
>
> The announce message there, is from gnome-announce-mailinglist, where
> new software is announced to the users, and thatpost there -is- the
> releasenotes for -that- package. The announces contain clips of the
> softwares -changelog-, which is also in the softwares package. So the
> changes conserning Yelp, were actually fully reported in the changelog
> of the Yelp package.
>
> All changes to all packages can't be in the Gnome-platform changelog,
> coz the file would then be several mb's in size. It only details some of
> the -biggest- changes, which this was not. For more detailed list of
> changes, everyone can look in certail packages own Changelog.
>  
I don't agree. You can't require that all users follow the 
gnome-announce mailing list to be able to find out what's new in a GNOME 
release, especially if you want GNOME to catch on among "simple users" 
(and that goal seems to be part of the background for the changes 
discussed.) Actually, I don't think you should expect them to be too 
aware of the "package" concept at all. In principle, users upgrade 
*GNOME*, or even the whole operation system, not packages. And when they 
do, they must be able to find out all about what changed from one source 
of information. OK, not details on every cosmetic change or minor 
functionality update, but I don't think what we're talking about here is 
that minor, and it's also *removed* functionality, which is much more 
important to mention.

I don't think the "changes" document would get overly large if you added 
an item like

   * The help system can no longer view info or manual pages.

and similar ones for changes of the same magnitude. Actually, it could 
definitely grow quite a bit without hurting anyone.

Also, as far as I cab tell, there isn't a changelog included with the 
yelp *package* (as opposed to the source code repository) - I can't find 
it in the variant I have, anyway.

- Toralf