Hi,

Daniel Egger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> This is possible, but using anchors in a file means that last time I
> looked you cannot render a notice that the help is not available
> because the help browser would load the file and then jump to the
> beginning of the document when the anchor doesn't exist.

The help-browser behaviour for non-existant anchors could probably be
changed. I'd have to look into the GtkHTML2 API to give a more
definite answer but I think it should be doable.

> Also it's not good for the user experience when you press F1 on some
> tool and get a 50 pages document explaining all tools at once, even
> when the display starts at the right position within the 50
> pages. Not to mention that one will need gobs of memory to render
> such documents because of all the images we already have or intend
> to have.

Noone said we have to use a single file only.

> But yes, giving up granularity to ease maintainance is possible but
> more like a quick hack than a real solution. I really detest hacks
> when not doing them for myself because it makes one look rather
> foolish.

Now I am finally sure that I still don't have the slightest idea of
the problems you see and what you imagine as the solution. Would you
mind to explain it for me again?

In the meantime, I will try to outline the system I am imagining.  We
would remove all the hardcoded HTML filenames from GIMP and replace
them with unique and meaningful identifiers like for example
"gimp-file-new-dialog". The help files would be written in DocBook/XML
and we would assign the same ids as id attributes to the associated
content.  The DocBook/XML files are then converted to a reasonably
fine-grained set of XHTML files and the XSLT processor creates an
additional XML file that holds a mapping from id to filenames. Of
course multiple ids may point to the same file. The GIMP helpbrowser
is then passed the id, it reads the mapping table and loads the HTML
file that contains the anchor with the requested id. If the XML file
doesn't list the requested id, the help-browser can display a standard
page that explains that help for this subject is missing.


Sven
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