Descriptive element in introspection()?

[Havoc Pennington]

Hi,

Here are a couple of old threads:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dbus/2005-October/003591.html
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dbus/2006-February/004202.html

One challenge is that if localized (which there will be demand to do),
the docs would be multiplied in size by order of 100x (see language
list at http://www.gnome.org/i18n/). This will make introspection data
MUCH larger. So a good solution would probably address this, since
only a dfeet-style debugger app actually needs the docs. Within a
desktop session, "only send the current language" would solve it, but
on the system bus there is no current language...

Another issue iirc was the format of the docs; allowing arbitrary HTML
seems onerous since Gecko or WebKit would be needed to display, but
any more limited markup would tend toward feature creep over time.

Keeping it very simple and just allowing one markup-less string might
be the way to go, I don't know.

Anyway, there are various issues, and as with all changes, the needed path is:

1) identify and write up issues and tradeoffs in comprehensive way,
post to list; address in particular any issues raised in past/existing
threads

2) revise writeup in light of feedback received (or abandon the change
if it starts to look like a bad idea after evaluation)

3) convert revised writeup to patches to spec and/or code

4) submit patches in bugzilla

And in this case nobody has had a chance to do these things yet afaik.

Havoc