using gnome-help-caller

[Felix Bellaby <felix pooh u-net com>]

Mark Galassi writes:
 > 
 > Dudes, I have a (for now ugly) hack to try to display
 > context-sensitive help in a GNOME application I'm writing.
 > 
 > I haven't figured out if there is a proper way to do it, but I
 > remember seeing a program called gnome-help-caller, so I played with
 > it and discovered that I can do
 > 
 > 	system("echo URL | gnome-help-caller");
 > 
 > and it will start a new window with the URL open.

The Right Way to start the browser in the way you want is to use
CORBA. This is what gnome-help-caller does internally.

My understanding of gnome-help-caller (from reading the sources) is
that it is just an example program illustrating how to use CORBA 
for this purpose. You should be able to cut and paste its source 
code with minor alterations to do what you want.

 > 1. Would the authors of gnome-help-caller mind if I add some command
 >    line options for things like "--url-new-window" and
 >    "--url-same-window"?

gnome-help-caller provides a means of doing this already: you prepend 
the url with a '#' to use the "current" browser window and leave it
off to start a new one.

 > 2. gnome-core/help-browser/Makefile.am does not create a
 >    libgnome-help.*a library, but I think it could do so easily, since
 >    it already defines the macro

This would be pointless given the CORBA interface. (o:

BTW, Mark, are there any plans to develop stylesheets that convert
DocBook into html for the gnome-help-browser in a consistent and 
distinctly "gnomey" way ? 

I have done conversions using plain vanilla Modular DocBook for 
Aisleriot (with largely mindless markups) and got reasonable ghelp.
However, Norm Walsh is trying to produce good API docs rather than
online ghelp. There must be scope for developing new entities and 
DSSSL in the gnome cvs that would implement a ghelp "style" (and 
provide consistent makefiles as a spin off). 

Felix