Fry and frob
I was looking at glibc's string.h today and found some funny-looking functions in there that I have never seen before. Have you ever used strfry() or memfrob() in any of your code? :)
On another note, I just released a new Devhelp which has a fair number of new features. I have some things that I would like to work on next, including taking advantage of the new information in gtk-doc output, and getting typeahead search working a bit better in the HTML view. Hopefully I'll get some more Devhelp hacking done during the holidays.
Comments
haha, I noticed strfry() a few days ago too, and was thinking the same thing... :)
Posted by: Albert | December 20, 2005 02:15 AM
Random question: I use Devhelp, and it's pretty neat. Significantly nicer than a web browser with a bunch of bookmarks.
But I also use Yelp, and it's also pretty neat. And -- apart from the fact that Yelp is used for user docs and Devhelp is used for dev docs -- I don't know what the difference is.
On my Mac, for example, it uses the same help program for both user and dev docs.
I'm usually the last person to suggest merging applications (I wish wish wish they'd break up Evolution), but in this case, both apps seem to really do exactly the same thing.
OK, that was more of an observation than a question. :-) Cheers, and have fun hacking Devhelp!
Posted by: Ken | December 20, 2005 03:57 AM
Ken, that's a pretty common suggestion. Sure, the two apps have some parts in common, but the objectives for Yelp and Devhelp are fairly different in my opinion. I think the Mac way is a mistake, because it makes it a lot more difficult to add powerful features specially tuned for the developer, without making the end user tool filled with cruft that has no use for an end user browsing application manuals.
Posted by: Richard | December 20, 2005 10:19 AM
...which is why, typically, I'm against merging apps. :-)
I'd tend to agree with you on principle, but in this instance, it seems that the user-doc-app has more features than the dev-doc-app (e.g., bookmarks, beagle integration, printing). In day-to-day use I don't know of any developer-specific features, but I have lamented "gee, Yelp has feature X, I can't wait until DevHelp gets it" (or vice versa) -- it feels like I'm waiting for the exact same features to be implemented in two different apps.
Can you give an example of a "powerful feature specially tuned for the developer"?
But if you have some cool new features waiting in the wings, bring 'em on. :-)
Posted by: Ken | December 20, 2005 07:44 PM
It's already got stuff that's not appropriate for end user manual browsing. Like how it handles tabs and windows, reuses windows on the current desktop when integrating with emacs/vim.
It knows what a function/struct/enum/etc is (this information is not used and exposed in the UI yet, but will be for implementing better search possibilities and to display the keywords differently). Other metadata specific to the gtk-doc format can be used as well, such as the versioning/deprecation info.
There are plans for different sets of gtkdoc books, so you can have your setup for one project that uses gtk+, gnome-vfs and gconf, and another one that only uses gtk+. That way you can use it for several different projects without messing up things by having loads of irrelevant contents around when searching.
I want to have some kind of bookmark support, but I'd rather make it keyword/tag based and not just a list of links.
I'm not sure why beagle integration would make sense at all in devhelp.
Posted by: Richard | December 20, 2005 08:23 PM