Xhelp code on launchpad ready

[Jim Campbell]

Hi Jani,

Thanks for your feedback.  Giusseppe has already responded to the technical
items, and your suggestions are all reasonable - I just wish they had come
sooner.  We talked about it at a couple of our IRC meetings [1], and there
was also a pretty decent thread on the mailing list seeking feedback on the
proposed project [2] before any real work had been started.

Xubuntu is a volunteer project, though.  No one person is going to read
every ML thread or go to every meeting.  Given that, is there anything we
can do to prevent situations like this in the future?

Jim

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Meetings/Archive/Minutes/2007-05-20
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Meetings/Archive/Minutes/2007-05-30
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Meetings/Archive/Minutes/2007-06-16

[2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/xubuntu-devel/2007-June/003640.html

On 8/6/07, Jani Monoses <jani.monoses at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Jim,
>
> thanks for the link.
>
> >
> > Yes, please see here:
> >
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/xubuntu-documentation-browser
> > <
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/xubuntu-documentation-browser
> >
>
> There's this statement in the spec that I do not agree with at all:
>
> "Xubuntu developer team members have suggested that it would be easier to
> code the
> Xubuntu Documentation Browser than to removed the Gnome libs from yelp."
>
> In general I doubt writing something from scratch is easier that adapting
> an existing app.
> Did anyone look at yelp sources before starting this project?
>
> However, a problem with yelp that I can see is not its gnome deps, but
> that GNOME docs are not plain HTML
> so if yelp can only work with that specific XML format it's useless for
> the existing Xfce doc.
>
> "New users often do not know that Xubuntu documentation is stored within
> Firefox, and thus do not look
> for it when first using their web browser. If a new user promptly changes
> their default homepage,
> they may never even know that Xubuntu documentation exists!"
>
> Isn't that better solved by making sure the Help is prominent enough? If
> experience shows Xubuntu users
> that could use some help cannot find it, we should fix that. Having a new
> app is not the easiest way.
> What about placing a help launcher in the panel just like Ubuntu. Put
> xfhelp4 in a launcher with a nice icon.
> Done :)
>
>
> One thing I definitely agree with is that firefox is slow, and on older
> hardware that is even more noticeable.
> But assuming the user has a browser, reading help is not more intensive
> than browsing the web.
> There may be people who replace firefox with opera or dillo or whatever is
> faster, but xfbrowser4 is used
> for calling help. That tries to run various browsers in turn, so whichever
> the user has will be used.
>
> I doubt a custom app will be faster (and more stable) than dillo for
> example.
>
> I'd rather the real problem of new users having a hard time finding help
> was solved with the minimum of new
> code and developer effort that could be spent elsewhere in the project.
>
> Having said that, I am not stopping anyone from working on something they
> enjoy and that may be useful eventually,
> nor am I trying to make people spend their free time on something they'd
> rather leave alone. Just pointing out
> that this is not how I would go about this problem.
>
> Jani
>
>
> --
> xubuntu-devel mailing list
> xubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
>
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