Re: GTK+ app using the GNOME help browser?

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

teekay <tony kwok 3web net> writes:
> Hi Havoc;
>
> At 09:39 07-05-01 -0400, you wrote:
> > > Is there a way to add help menu item 
> > > callbacks for a GTK+ app (pure GTK+)
> > > to use a help system like the GNOME help browser?
> >
> > How about:
> > - open the file gnome-libs/libgnome/gnome-help.c
> > - copy the stuff in there
>
> Your participation and help is much appreciated by the 
> members of this list. But you ~must~ start thinking more
> like an application developer, instead of a technical 
> guru and acrobat user. 

So do you have a better answer to the question that would be more like
an application developer? I don't. There is no way in GTK to do this.
There is no easy way. The easiest thing to do is to copy the code from
gnome-help.c, so that is what I told him to do.

Now, I could go in gnome-help.c, see what it does myself, and then
tell him what it does, and then he could reimplement gnome-help.c's
functionality from my description; but that would be a) less helpful
than him looking at gnome-help.c himself and b) take me a lot of time.

There probably _should_ be a better solution for me to give, but there
isn't one AFAIK, so I gave the best one I could think of.

> In real world, applications are written for users which 
> have neither the time, nor the technical capacity of 
> manipulating the operating system or its components. 
> If a particular functionality is worth having, the application 
> developer must provide it, without forcing the user to 
> intervene in the environment beyond the application 
> itself.

I don't see how him copying gnome-help.c affects whether the user has
to intervene in anything. This is purely an app-developer-visible
issue.

> There is a wider context to this: the success of Linux
> hinges on its ability to be usefull in the hands of
> a different (not better, not worse, just different)
> and entirely new class of users.

I don't understand what point you are trying to make. I certainly
understand this, and such an understanding has driven many of the GTK
2 enhancements. But it has nothing to do with the easiest way to
implement interaction with the GNOME help browser in a pure GTK app.

I'm honestly curious what you think was wrong with my answer and what
you would say instead. ;-)

Havoc