Help System Specification: Rationale of help path

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On 15.05.21 14:35, notebook wrote:

> Apart from the KDE-guy this sounds like "it's already like this" and 
> "others use it, too". Perhaps I should search for records of that 
> meeting in 2010 - or even dig into the reasoning behind `localedir` 
> (any input welcome).

As one of the people involved from the KDE side back then I remember 
that there were discussions but I don't think they went particularly 
deep because in the end it was a question what was easier to implement 
given the already existing code.

In the end it doesn't matter that much and is a pretty arbitrary 
decision depending on personal preferences and from what perspective you 
look at it.

As a user you most often won't care about the file system and paths 
because you will use the UI.

As an application developer you look at one application and translations 
to multiple languages of the same documents.

As a translator you look at translations in one language for multiple 
applications.

> @"Changing is not worth the effort": Guessing, that the current 
> systems live another 20+ years, I'd say it's worth the effort giving 
> its superiority over the current system. That being commended, I 
> should search for why things are like they are.

I don't think there is a solution which clearly satisfies the needs from 
all perspectives better than the current one, so I doubt there is clear 
superiority of any choice. As the current system is good enough to 
handle everything what is needed, even if that might not be the optimal 
solution for certain work flows, but it does work, I also don't see a 
need to fundamentally change anything here.

rhkramer:
>> I am not likely to ever try to access a help file in other than my 
>> native language ((American) English), so getting into a directory 
>> with all the other English help files seems more natural to me.
>
> Unfortunately this only works, if you are able to enjoy the pleasure 
> of an almost-always supported language.

For users KDE (and I assume most other environments) allows users to 
chose a list of languages and they are used in a cascading way depending 
on availability of translations. This should cover this use case for the 
majority of people and is not dependent on the path details how the data 
is stored.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>