Bug 691956

Summary:	[RFE] Support for WebHelp output.
Product:	[Community] Publican	Reporter:	Stephen Gordon <sgordon>
Component:	publican	Assignee:	Jeff Fearn 🐞 <jfearn>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Ruediger Landmann <rlandman+disabled>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	future	CC:	mmcallis, publican-list
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	FutureFeature
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Enhancement
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2011-08-24 02:00:45 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description Stephen Gordon 2011-03-29 23:56:33 UTC

Description of problem:

Rudi has noted that as of DocBook 1.76.1 a new output format called WebHelp is supported (http://www.janetswisher.com/?itemid=273).

We are currently looking at using the publican generated html output for providing context sensitive help from a GUI application. It is suspect that long term this new output format may be a better fit for this use case.

Request investigation into the feasibility of adding WebHelp support to publican.

Comment 1 Jeff Fearn 🐞 2011-04-18 05:56:28 UTC

I could have sworn I replied to this ticket o_O

It is highly unlikely we will support this format.

Firstly, the tool is in Java and we are actively reducing external dependencies; reversing this trend would take considerable persuasion.

Secondly, the tool is not part of DocBook 1.76.1, it is a completely separate system. This system is not packaged for Fedora and is unlikely to readily pass the packaging process.

Thirdly, the approach taken basically builds a separate website for each book. This lack of integration makes it unsuitable for product based websites.

Fourthly, the approach used is client based and it's highly likely that the sheer size of some of our content will make this system perform extremely poorly. Loading megabytes of search information in to java-script is going to be extremely expensive on bandwidth and browser resources.

Comment 2 Jeff Fearn 🐞 2011-08-24 02:00:45 UTC

Definitely don't want to be adding any more Java based deps.