possible documentation viewer?

[Sean Wheller]

On Friday 03 June 2005 23:46, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > 2. Although it isn't on the above list, Printing is a showstopper.
>
> Highly desireable, not showstopper.

Umm that is in your opinion Jeff. I think what counts is user opinion. What 
JeffS is saying is that users want, no, expect it. If != print go elsewhere. 
It's just another nail in the coffin.

>
> > From a documentation point of view, there are two options:
> > 1. fix yelp so that it has the standard features that users expect
> > 2. create our own help system
> >
> > Option 1 doesn't seem to be working out for us.
>
> Very little work has been done on option 1. I'll be using some of my
> desktop budget to deal with a number of Yelp issues, and will be paying
> attention to freedesktop.org movements in this area. Mucking around
> creating a separate Ubuntu help system is an abject, unproductive waste of
> time, which will not pay off in the future (unless it's very clearly done
> with the goal of being adopted elsewhere, and solving everyone else's
> problems too).

We are happy to hear this and willing to help where we can. However, until 
Yelp supports our feature set and requirements I can see no reason to settle 
for a lesser option.

>
> Certain members of the documentation team appear to be concentrating on
> tools and infrastructure more than the documentation itself - this is not
> productive.

There are some problems in that area, but the core people who are committing 
are focused on the content. However, while developing these people are 
increasingly frustrated by the limitations of the technical application layer 
and therefore go in search of solutions.

After some time wasted, I decided to ignore the tool layer in favor of plain 
HTML in a frameset, with jscript and CSS to spice up life. This direction 
will remain my focus until such time as the dynamic transformation 
capabilities of help are able to support docbook.

In the event, that yelp is not able to support our requirement set by 5.10, 
then we will ship static HTML pages.


-- 
Sean Wheller
Technical Author
sean at inwords.co.za
084-854-9408
http://www.inwords.co.za
Registered Linux User #375355
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