[Scrollkeeper-devel] Simple URI's

[Dan M. <d-...@uc...>]

GNOME uses a "gnome-help" URI scheme.  So if you type
"gnome-help:gnumeric", it looks in
$prefix/share/gnome/help/gnumeric/<locale>/ and looks for the doc under
the name gnumeric.sgml or else index.html.  It is a very convenient way to
find a manual.  It also allows for cross-referencing of documents very
simply since any document you write knows that "gnome-help:gnumeric" will
point to the Gnumeric manual regardless of where things are installed (eg.
under /usr or /opt or ...).

The problem with this is:
1) other help browsers have to understand how to handle the
"gnome-help" URI scheme
2) presumably other desktops will introduce more URI schemes
3) many docs won't be addressable at all this way unless scrollkeeper
provides a mechanism.

So probably what we want is to introduce a scheme which passes the
identifier (what is the right term here?) to scrollkeeper which can return
the path.  So for example, one would use: "sk-help:modem-HOWTO".  It
would have to find the doc (and select from any available versions,
languages, formats) and then display it.  This would be *very* useful IMO,
both for users as well as for cross-referencing between documents.

A couple issues which pop up:

1) Selecting the right doc.  We could have a default setting for language
(just use the current locale), formats (perhaps in /etc/sk.conf we list in
order of preference), and versions (show the biggest version number).

2) Mapping the names.  The OMF file should specify the name by which the
document should be referred.  This seems to require yet another OMF
attribute to be created, perhaps IDENTIFIER.URINAME?  We will not have
complete uniqueness here.  However ideally we will have a 1-1
correspondence between NUID's and URINAME's.  We could keep a database on
the web so people can register names and find out if a name is taken.  
This creates even more administrative overhead, but I think it is well
worth the trouble it would take to set up a simple php/mysql site on
SourceForge.

Thoughts?

Dan