Re: Gui Documentation

[John Darrington]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 08:51:36PM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
     
     I see that Debian includes a program called javahelp2.  I guess
     that this supports the javahelp documentation format (I haven't
     yet looked to see what format that is), so it seems that the
     software and the format is probably "free enough" to use as an
     online documentation format for a GNU program.
     
     On the other hand, the Java and GNOME "ecosystems" don't
     intersect much, so I think that it would be pretty unusual for a
     GTK+ program to use javahelp for its online help.  It looks to me
     that DocBook is a better choice: I see that the GTK+ reference
     manual, at least, is distributed in DocBook format.

DocBook isn't exactly a format as such.  It's a schema that can be encoded
in many different formats.  We currently use an XML encoded DocBook format
to display the Reference manual (Ctrl-H from the GUI).  This XML in turn is
generated by Makeinfo from the Texinfo source.  Makeinfo doesn't do a 
perfect job here.  I did talk briefly to Karl Berry about this some time ago,
but didn't follow it up.  Maybe now would be a good time to do so.

J'

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