seul-dev-help status - sort of.

[twoducks <twoducks@globalserve.net>]

Hello. I notice that a few new people have subscribed
to seul-dev-help. I am unsure how many of you
want to work on the help system and in what capacity,
so I thought I would write about the current help system
status. I was figuring on posting some new docs
sometime in here, including a better status document,
but I figured I would wing something for now so you
know that something is going on.

I. Current help system status

Currently some coding work has occurred in the help
system itself. At the moment there exists a help
viewer which can view man pages, html and text.
There is also a companion program which allows
the user to browse help document titles in a sort of
contents format (using the folder metaphor). See
the web site http://www.globalserve.net/~twoducks/seul-dev-help/
for the current coding release (v0.2) which also has
snapshots. Ooh. Aah.

II. Current documentation status

Some effort has been expended towards locating various
documents out there and integrating them in the help
system. But not much. So far only the main HOWTOs and
manual pages have actually been integrated, though
any document can be viewed (which is in one of the
viewable format).

III. Future help system work

I am currently in contact with a person who is working on
the help system for gnome. It is quite possible that there
will be some overlap and co-operation between our groups.

The next component that is scheduled for work on the
xhelp system is the search engine. If there are other coders
who wish to help, though, there can be more than one thing
being worked on at one time. Let me know if you want to
help.

IV. Future documentation work

More effort needs to be expended in finding out what documents
are out there and integrating them with the help system. As
well, new documentation will have to be written (more geared
towards the target audience of SEUL.)

*********

I will be posting some documents in the next couple of days.
Any comments, feedback and people wanting to help out with
coding, document writing or even just ideas is welcome.

Ken Duck
twoducks@globalserve.net