Hello,
Krzysztof Czaja wrote:
but you want them separate too... a reference page should be kept in a separate window anyway, so what is wrong about that window being controlled by another application?
I don't see where we're proposing to keep them separate?
However, my point is not about using a web browser, but about storing a reference page as a single parsable resource, instead of breaking it into several unparsable comments (same goes for any other type of longer self-contained text).
The problem with a specialized file for reference is that it has to be edited independantly of the patches themselves. The -help patches ARE the major source of documentation in PD. It is much easier for the developer to conform to a documentation standard in a help-patch and then get access to all the searching functions and so on, than it is for the developer to remember to edit the damn references file. (It will simply fall out of date.) It seems hard enough for developers to keep their help patches in sync with external source, let alone them doing it again in another file.
The way it is displayed is quite another matter. I am proposing the external browser, as the easiest, and the most old-fashioned-Pdish way to do it. Another option is including some kind of a browser widget in pd-gui, which you seem proposing:
Again I don't see enough difficiencies in the patching format for documentation to warrent this move. Where does the content for this html thing come from? All recreated from scratch from all the existing patch-based documentation?
b.