I'd like to see the idea I wrote about at the following two URLs
implemented in doc-base.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2005/06/msg00024.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2005/06/msg00026.html
I'm beginning to work on a patch for it. Let me
explain how I think it might work.
doc-base converts /usr/share/doc-base/$package into a
file /var/lib/doc-base/menu/$package. The menu title, section,
description etc would be derived from the fields in the doc-base file.
The menu command and menu needs bits are a little tricky because of the
following:
* the doc-base format has a way to specify multiple formats for docs
* the user may or may not have viewers for each of these formats
* certain viewers are only available in certain environments
* some viewers are preferred in gnome, others kde, while menu only
allows needs=X11
* for each of the viewers available, the user might prefer one first
The way I was thinking of solving this was to have a wrapper script that
is given a doc-base id, the menu environment it is running in, the
viewers and converters available, and which of them are preferred, and
does some magic to determine which actual command to run. I was thinking
that the maintainers of each viewer package would add a script to their
package that doc-base could run.
I've asked the menu maintainer, if s/he has any suggestions as to how to
go about this and if they think this is feasible with the current
doc-base files.
Surveying my system, I see the following formats: DVI, debiandoc-sgml,
docbook-xml, html/HTML, info, pdf/PDF, postscript/PostScript, texinfo
and text.