Re: [Scrollkeeper-devel] questions, questions

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

On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, Bob Stayton wrote:

> > From: Dan Mueth <d-...@uc...>
> >
> > [stuff deleted]
> > 
> > As for just supporting GNOME and KDE, this is definitely *not* the
> > intention.  There are many people who do not use GNOME or KDE, and that
> > will always be the case.  I would be happy to see another help browser
> > which is independent of these two desktops and which can utilize
> > scrollkeeper.  If there was a compelling reason to use some format other
> > than XML, then scrollkeeper's API could be extended.
> 
> Thanks for clarifying.  The application for ScrollKeeper I
> have in mind is not using a browser directly, but serving
> doc content with an HTTP server like Apache.  There are
> several ways to use XML on a server (AxKit, Cocoon), so
> using the XML Content List will be fine in that context.
> The server can also convert content to HTML if it needs
> to.  That approach can make ScrollKeeper-listed docs
> available to any browser.  

This is a great idea. I've been thinking that the servers on the Net would
be primarily be talking to help browser clients on the desktop and that
the servers would just serve as metadata databases.  But coupling this
with some conversion filters (SGML->HTML, SGML->PDF, SGML->PS, man->HTML,
SGML->audio?, etc.) and giving it a very slick interface allows you to
create a very nice help browser web application. For people with good
internet connections, this would be a very useful tool.  It also gives you
the benefit that you don't have to download an entire document since the
server is converting the document to HTML - you just download the pages
you read.  Also, any project, organization, company, etc. could use it
with their own particular set of documents.  This would be a very good
thing to pursue IMO.

This may in fact have been the part of Metalab's original plan.

Dan