Re: [lmi] "Help" button really does do something

[Greg Chicares]

On 2018-03-07 13:54, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2018 13:43:34 +0000 Greg Chicares <address@hidden> wrote:
[...]
> GC> Should we nevertheless retain the "Help" pushbuttons just in
> GC> case we write a whole new category of help text (3)? [...] No.
> 
>  Probably not, but it's a pity because, as a user, I think it's
> intimidating to be confronted with this dialog

If we were maintaining a word processor, provided to 10^9 customers
for a royalty of $10^2 a year each, we'd have $10^11 of revenue;
then, for one-tenth of a cent per "seat", we could spend $10^6 on an
enhancement to welcome new users. Animated paper clips or whatever.

But lmi is a boutique system, with dozens of users, not millions.
A $10^6 enhancement costs perhaps $10^4.5 per user, so it's simply
out of the question to do what the non-free-software colossi do.

Experienced users of illustration systems _expect_ to be confronted
by such a dialog, just as experienced airline pilots expect a cockpit
to be filled with levers and switches and buttons. The complexity is
inherent in the problem domain; a faithful representation in the
solution domain can't be simpler. There are separate controls for the
left and right ailerons, precisely because the airplane possesses
those things and a pilot needs to control them. It's intimidating to
people who don't know what an aileron is for, but they shouldn't be
flying an airplane.

> and it would be nice if the
> "Help" button opened some (new, so (3), but not quite, because it would be
> part of (1)) new_illustration.html file which briefly explained what are
> the most important options to change and, maybe, also told people to use

Every field is crucially important in some circumstance. It's not
like a word processor that offers a selection of fonts, enabling
you to create a perfectly good document if you don't know that,
and a fancier one if you do.

If a sizable set of fields is never important to a significant
proportion of users, we give them a 'skin' without those fields.

> the "?" button in the title bar on various controls as, again, I'm not sure
> how many of users are actually aware of its existence right now.

We could add an item here:
  https://www.nongnu.org/lmi/faq.html
e.g.:
  What does each input field mean?
  [answer:] Do this:
    Click the '?' box here: [show a picture of it]
    The cursor changes to: [show another picture].
    Now click on the field you want to learn about.
    [more pictures]
    Et voilà! [maybe another picture]
I'll ask in the office whether that would be worth the trouble,
but I imagine that anyone who would use it already knows about it.

The reality is just that lmi is for users who already understand
universal life insurance. Those who understand don't need an
explanation of 'External1035ExchangeTaxBasis'; they might like to
be able to click '?' to confirm that a particular text control
really does correspond to that concept, but be, but they already
know the concept and don't need it explained. But those who don't
know the concept are not helped by:
  <help>Tax basis for external 1035 exchange</help>
What does "1035" mean here? What's an "exchange" What's a
"tax basis"? What's an "aileron"? I could spend hours writing an
essay about that, but how many users would read it, and how many
would be brought to understanding by having read it? It's a highly
technical concept, and there can exist no "TL;DR" explanation.