After a quick discussion with mitch and Sven in the IRC, i've some new ideas and TODOs for the gimp-help-2 to submit. I added these terms to the WIKI. Sorry for beeing a bit late, but the week is a bit stressful.

1. Renaming of the current XML files, that the corresponding help ids: app/widgets/gimphelp-ids.h. This is mostly done by me. I'll check the changes in as soon as possible.

2. Adding XML files for all the other help ids, especially for the plugins. This would help the gimp developers to test the help browser. The content should look like the one in: src/not_yet_written.xml. The structure of each document should look like: a) a phrase like: "this document has not been written" b) author name
c) plugin name, additional information, etc d) an email adress and a contact person, where a person can send as (plain) documentation

3. This item was not discussed on the IRC, but maybe an interesting thing to add: an example how to use a tool|documented item. This should look like eg. "How do you make a rectangular selection". By explaining this example step by step, i think, it'll make the life much easier for the user.

Additionally, i've an idea for making live a bit easier:

We've now only a TODO list on the WIKI. Every gimp-help-2 developer can pick a term and solve it. This reminds me to bugzilla. Well, this implies, that someone feels responsible for his part on gimp-help-2 (writing content or something else) and can use bugzilla. How do think other gimp-help-2 members about this? Maybe the project needs a bit more contributors, for making sense...

I updated the WIKI pages correspondingly to this mail.

Greetings,

On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 12:44:16AM +0100, Daniel Egger wrote:

Am Mit, den 17.12.2003 schrieb Roman Joost um 21:30:

1. Renaming of the current XML files, that the corresponding help ids: app/widgets/gimphelp-ids.h. This is mostly done by me. I'll check the changes in as soon as possible.

Huh? Probably it's just me being dense...

Heh - no. I shouldn't write mails during a lecture ... The existing XML files are renamed to the name of the help ids in $GIMP/app/widgets/gimphelp-ids.h, eg: airbrush.xml is now: tool-airbrush.xml

2. Adding XML files for all the other help ids, especially for the plugins. This would help the gimp developers to test the help browser. The content should look like the one in: src/not_yet_written.xml. The structure of each document should look like: a) a phrase like: "this document has not been written" b) author name
c) plugin name, additional information, etc d) an email adress and a contact person, where a person can send as (plain) documentation

This has caused quite some gripes back in the good ol' times. What about using xinclude tricks to supply the content of one template document as the source for yet-to-be written files? This approach is documented in http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/ however I haven't had the time to verify that it works with xsltproc yet.

I'll have a look at it ...

3. This item was not discussed on the IRC, but maybe an interesting thing to add: an example how to use a tool|documented item. This should look like eg. "How do you make a rectangular selection". By explaining this example step by step, i think, it'll make the life much easier for the user.

We talked about this earlier and seemed to have agreed that this is a nice idea. :)

Okey - added this to the WIKI ...

We've now only a TODO list on the WIKI. Every gimp-help-2 developer can pick a term and solve it. This reminds me to bugzilla. Well, this implies, that someone feels responsible for his part on gimp-help-2 (writing content or something else) and can use bugzilla. How do think other gimp-help-2 members about this? Maybe the project needs a bit more contributors, for making sense...

I don't think it makes sense to have formal assignments of specific topics as this would take away most of the fun a volunteers project should make.

Merry Christmas,