That could potentially work, but we're pretty sold on the merits of a good
HTML-based help system. There are a number of reasons for this, but
essentially the three biggies are as follows:
1. Anyone who doesn't have a Web browser by now should get one. Really.
They're wonderful products, and they're free. :-) If necessary, we could
easily arrange to ship one on the CD.
2. AbiWord is focused on editing high-quality paper-based documents. HTML
is optimized for online hyperlinked browsing, with optional printing. Which
of those tools sounds better suited for online help?
Sure, we could add lots of code (hyperlinks, read-only mode, fewer window
decorations, etc.) to make a help reader out of AbiWord, but that work's not
tremendously leverageable for other purposes.
3. Like any Open Source project, we've benefitted greatly from the work of
other pre-existing Open Source codebases, and one design criteria we always
keep in mind is how leverageable our work could be for other GPL projects.
(It's certainly not our top priority, but it makes for a great tiebreaker.)
If we're able to generate good GPL code for a cross-platform HTML-based help
system, then that code would benefit a *lot* of other desktop applications.
Paul