Re: [semi-OT] Apple's Help Viewer: a note to the frustrated
Re: [semi-OT] Apple's Help Viewer: a note to the frustrated
- Subject: Re: [semi-OT] Apple's Help Viewer: a note to the frustrated
- From: Gregory Weston <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 10:11:15 -0400
On May 8, 2004, at 9:42 AM, Gwynne wrote:
On May 8, 2004, at 7:36 AM, Gregory Weston wrote:
As of Panther ... Help Viewer seems to use exactly the
same engine for rendering as Safari 1.2, which means that it supports
full HTML 4, XHTML 1.0/1.1, CSS1/2, JavaScript, and all the other
goodies. It is my opinion that anyone who requires Panther should
take
advantage of this capability in Help Viewer....
"Should" is an interesting word. You're essentially recommending that
we use an undocumented API. It may be convenient, and it may very
well be that the lack of documentation is either an oversight or a
lack of resources in Cupertino but the fact remains that until and
unless it's documented it's not supported. Ain't nuthin' sayin' that
what you observed in Panther is true on my machine or will remain
true in Tiger. While I suspect this is probably safe, it's not
unheard of for Apple to deploy something for their own use and then
kill it because it turned out to have unforeseen issues. People who
discovered and took advantage of those facilities screwed their
customers.
I understand your argument, and it's a good one. However, HTML
rendering engines bend over backwards, sideways, and in some
calisthetically impossible directions to be forgiving of various forms
of HTML; even if Apple reverted Help Viewer to HTML 1.0 tomorrow, the
Help written in XHTML 1.1 with CSS2 would still display, albiet as
little more than plain text with embedded images. While it is of
course impossible to predict "unforseen issues", there is no reason
whatsoever to believe that having Help Viewer support more rather than
less forms of HTML could have negative consequences.
The negative is what happens if the functionality of HV recedes.
And, most importantly, the capability is already there. Documented or
not, I will not have been the only person to discover it, and I can't
believe I'd be the only person to take advantage of the power.
But that's precisely the point: It's not safe to assume that Help
Viewer has any capability at all beyond what's documented. Apple is
under no obligation to support something that's merely empirically
observed. So certainly it's reasonable to urge them to provide such
documentation. But until they do, you're acting at your own (trivial
though it may be) peril.
Apple's opened the door by providing it in Panther, and they'll cause
breakage by undoing that.
Apple's opened no door. You found the key hidden in the hollow rock
next to the mat. Apple has not been especially shy about changing the
lock in the past.
Granted, they've shown astonishingly little respect for causing
breakage lately, but if they're willing to do this they'd better give
me a _very_ good reason I have to rewrite my entire help book to be
three times as big on-disk and not look half as good.
I can give you a good reason right now: You relied on undocumented
behavior.
G
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