Re: gtk_show_help and gtk_show_url

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

Sorry to come in here wildly late, but ...

On Oct 8, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Shaun McCance wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-10-07 at 17:10 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > ...
> >   - in current GNOME, what are the right "parameters" to open a help
> > file? (i.e. what values does gtk_help_show() need to open a gnome help
> > file, such as document ID or anchor or whatever)
>
> http://library.gnome.org/devel/libgnome/stable/libgnome-gnome- 
> help.html#gnome-help-display
> ...
> Some questions:
> - What sort of information does the Windows help system need?

<http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644704.aspx>
<http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms728718.aspx>

> - What sort of information does the Mac help system need?
> ...

<http://urlx.org/apple.com/d50c3>

Help buttons in Mac OS X (in bundled software, at least) usually don't  
open exact pages. Instead they open search results, in which the actual  
page the developer was thinking of is the first or second result. This  
is, I assume, because Apple are afraid of the software and the help  
getting out of sync. If a Help button linked directly to a page that  
had been renamed, or merged into another page, the help viewer would  
have to return a nasty error "The help topic does not exist, contact  
your application vendor for an updated Help file" à la Windows, and  
people would be put off trying to using the help ever again.

I think that's a valid concern, but an annoying solution. I would  
rather that any updated API for opening a help page in Gnome had two  
compulsory parameters -- one for the page ID, and one for a fallback  
search string if Yelp can't find the page. That way the page-not-found  
error would only ever appear when debugging.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/