Re: [Scrollkeeper-devel] What about the distributions?

[Eric B. <eb...@cy...>]

Ali Abdin wrote:
> 
> Secondly, how about .spec files set an environment variable to
> OMF_NO_INSTALL when building? (and unset it when done) - Then
> scrollkeeper can detect it and just not install the file into its
> database.

Much simpler, if you want to throw away this information, just make
scrollkeeper
do nothing if the database does not exist previously.

But I think it's a better idea to keep this partial information and have
it either
merged into the user's database or directly used by the web browser.

> > Multiple database files processing in the Help Browser could be
> > implemented obviously. The problem here is that Scrollkeeper is supposed
> > to be the universal document cataloging system for every help browser.
> > That means it is supposed to offer the simplest possible interface for
> > the browser. However the reality at the moment is that the only help
> > browser that will use Scrollkeeper in the near future is Nautilus and we
> > develop the Nautilus module that will use Scrollkeeper so we can adapt
> > the code easily. One possible solution would be that we would supply a
> > library that would compile the partial database files to one XML DOM
> > tree and pass that to the browser. I wonder how much overhead this would
> > create at start-up if there are a couple of hundreds (or thousands) of
> > partial database files.

If we adopt such a solution, there has to be a caching mechanism. You
can't
rebuild it all at the startup every time.

> I don't think you should pass the XML DOM tree. I think there should be
> API functions (or commands or whatever) to allow you to get every item in
> the tree. Also, to speed things up, there should be a cache (so you don't
> have to re-build the XML DOM tree all the time).

Yes, if the browser can cope with partial information, and pick up in
several
files when it needs some more information, then the problem is solved.


-- 
Éric Bischoff  -  Documentation and Localization
Caldera (Deutschland) GmbH - Linux for eBusiness
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