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Re: [Gnucap-devel] Help.. (thoughts about the help command)


From: Felix Salfelder
Subject: Re: [Gnucap-devel] Help.. (thoughts about the help command)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 09:14:45 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 01:42:10PM -0400, al davis wrote:
> A standard needs to be defined to enable finding that file.
> [..]
> At one point I suggested texinfo format, but now I don't think 
> it is the way to go.  The help system needs to work without 
> texinfo (or anything else) installed.

I agree about the levels. but i think it's not a good idea to
locate/parse text files at run time.

i'd say we should always put help text into .so's. then we do not need
to care a lot about
- the help text source format we choose (or somebody might choose for
  his work),
- help text run time location, and
- run time dependencies

it should be easy enough to turn texinfo (or whatever else) into static
strings that can be embedded into (a) .cc file(s). this would be done at
compile time, and will not affect run time dependencies. also, as i have
mentioned in another mail, if help comes within plugins, i can embed
help text to custom plugins.

it would be nice to have the help texts in a flexible format, so i can
e.g. turn it into man pages or postscript. yes, i sometimes even print
stuff (on paper). to me, texinfo looks quite optimal.

fwiw, this order looks practical to me:
- add level 1 help to base classes
- create a more verbose manual (texinfo, or something else)
- make manual accessible interactively as (a) plugin(s)

cheers
felix



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