[Lazarus] Building help files: the nitty-gritty

[Reinier Olislagers]

On 17-7-2012 10:55, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> Reinier Olislagers wrote:
>>> As a general point, current desktops (including KDE and Gnome) have a
>>> standardised set of programs for opening files by extension (xdg-open
>>> etc.), and to be quite honest I think it's not to the credit of anybody
>>> who tries to open a browser or viewer without reference to these.
>> In general, agreed, but:
>> If that standard allows keyword lookup etc.. I'm all for it. Also, the
>> number of standards must be manageable ;)
> 
> No, the tools are strictly for handling file and mime types:
> 
> -----8<-----
> xdg-desktop-icon (1) - command line tool for (un)installing icons to the
> desktop
> xdg-desktop-menu (1) - command line tool for (un)installing desktop menu
> items
> xdg-email (1)        - command line tool for sending mail using the
> users preferred e-mail composer
> xdg-icon-resource (1) - command line tool for (un)installing icon resources
> xdg-mime (1)         - command line tool for querying information about
> file type handling and adding descriptions for new file types
> xdg-open (1)         - opens a file or URL in the users preferred
> application
> xdg-screensaver (1)  - command line tool for controlling the screensaver
> xdg-settings (1)     - get various settings from the desktop environment
> ----->8-----

Ok, this would mean the xdg-open tools don't allow context-sensitive
help... and end of discussion on that front as far as LCL application
help is concerned, I suppose.
Unless
a. I'm misinterpreting things
b. there are other APIs/standards that address this

>> Finally, quite probably not *all* desktops support this (saw your
>> "current" up there)... so a fallback mechanism would be needed if others
>> are supported, too.
> 
> I agree about the fallback, but the xdg stuff has been in most if not
> all Linux distreaux for around five years (doesn't appear to be in
> Solaris 10 which is 5+ years old now, don't have a newer version to
> check). The important point is that the xdg command lines are
> standardised, the implementations are platform-specific.
Given the above this wouldn't really matter anymore, would it?