[Xfce-i18n] Documentation wiki on docs.xfce.org

[Nick Schermer]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Christian Dywan <christian at twotoasts.de> wrote:
> Am 02.01.2012 08:56, schrieb Nick Schermer:
>> I've pushed a branch with a function xfce_dialog_show_help()
>> applications can use to redirect to the documentation website. Doesn't
>> work yet (server side), but comments on the api are appreciated.
>>
> http://git.xfce.org/xfce/libxfce4ui/tree/libxfce4ui/xfce-dialogs.c?h=nick/docs#n112
>
> Midori has actually been using wiki-based documentation for while now.
> Basically the __export version of the HTML, with the <link
> rel=stylesheet> replaced with a custom stylesheet. Offline docs can be
> installed, otherwise online docs are opened. From my experience this has
> worked quite well, the number of updates increased greatly.
>
> So far translations were never included because it is next to impossible
> to make sure they include the latest updates. Will the proposed approach
> handle this? A way to automatically mark sections which changed
> analogous to fuzzy strings would be nice.

No that is hard. Translators can subscribe the the pages/categories to
get diff changes.

>
> How about using a GIO scheme for this, similar to what GNOME is doing?
>
> You could make it xfcehelp:thunar?page=2&offset=6 or xfcehelp:thunar#volman
>

A function is much simpler and always works. The idea of a scheme is
nice, but because of the modularity of the desktop (and the need of a
plugin) makes is somewhat more complicated.

> The  'xfcehelp' scheme could be implemented as a small helper
> application which automatically adds the version and falls back to the
> online wiki page otherwise.
> This would also leave the door open for using a dedicated offline viewer
> like yelp.

It is always possible to extend the helper for that too.

>
> Personally I would leave out the confirmation, if there's no offline
> docs simply open the browser.

Always nice to ask a user what we're about to do. It has a checkbox to
skip the warning in the future, so it is not much a disturbance.

Nick