Re: Questions (was: Re: A Critique: Getting Started with GNUstep on Windows)

[Svetlana A. Tkachenko]

Gregory Casamento wrote:
> HelpViewer uses RTF format.  Speaking of documentation I am of the
> concerted opinion that we should do away with autogsdoc.  The reason
> for this is because it is yet another example of NIH.

... not invented here? I was under the assumption that it
is using an XML format resembling something from Apple. I do not have
knowledge of whether the existing parser is sufficiently advanced to
keep it around, as I did not play with it much yet. One of included examples:

~/dev/HelpViewer-0.3/Examples/HelpViewer.help$ ls
attention.png  Bases.xlp  Creation.xlp  helpviewer-200.tiff
Introduction.xlp  Logo.tiff  main.xlp  note.png  ToDo.xlp

~/dev/HelpViewer-0.3/Examples/HelpViewer.help $ cat main.xlp
<document>

<header>
<title>Aide en ligne de HelpViewer</title>
</header>

<plain name="Couverture">
        <center>
                    <img src="Logo.tiff">
                                <br><br>
                                            <information>
                                                        HelpViewer.app
        permet de visualiser l'aide en ligne des programmes GNUstep.
                    </information>
                                <caution>
                                            (c) 2003 Nicolas Roard. Ce
        program est distribu▒ sous la GNU Public Licence (GPL).
                    </caution>
                                <note>
                                            site :
        <url>http://info.xdev.org/projets/helpviewer</url>
                    <br>
                                contact :
        <url>mailto:[redacted by Svetlana - was nicolas <insert barking
        dog here> roard <dot> com]</url>
                    </note>
                            </center>
                            </plain>

<chapter src="Introduction.xlp" name="Introduction"></chapter>
<chapter src="Creation.xlp" name="▒crire des fichiers d'aide
XLP"></chapter>
<chapter src="ToDo.xlp" name="To do ..."></chapter>

</document>

~/dev/HelpViewer-0.3/Examples/HelpViewer.help $


Gregory Casamento wrote:
> There are
> entire projects devoted to making beautiful documentation from
> comments... we are not one of them.

I agree but I do not know what format we would like to store
documentation in. And in case of documentation from comments I do not
understand how to deal with localization. Those are technical questions,
but if we can agree on a format, we have a new well-defined TODO item:
write <some new format> support in a help viewer app.

Could consider docbook as it is somewhat popular? Again someone more
experienced than me would be more useful.

Gregory Casamento wrote:
> ProjectCenter needs a great deal of attention and work

ProjectCenter.app does not crash when I compile its latest release by
hand. It is a Debian problem now I think. This is why I am thinking of
such a "pure" environment distribution, but that needs some thought
about what is best for users to be able to edit a program or a package
easily to create a local modified copy and experiment with it before
suggesting a patch and then packaging a new release.

Who knows, maybe one way is to try something that looks nice to me
personally and find out whether it works well, without spending time
speculating.


-- 
Svetlana A. Tkachenko
Member of the Free Software Foundation
www.fsf.org www.gnu.org www.freenode.net