Re: ANNOUNCE : HelpViewer 0.1

[Nicolas Roard]

On 2003-01-22 13:26:53 +0100 Tobias <ibotty@web.de> wrote:

(snap on things everyone agree)

> > I want
> > this help to be displayed in viewer with exact the same functions as
> > described above: follow links to topics, search for keywords etc (which is
> > what the Windoze context help does not provide). Thus, I vote for using
> > HelpViewer for the context help because it provides (or at least will do
> > so) all this.
> i think, if this (context help) should be a short description, i vote against 
> using helpviewer, but for a tooltip.

Yes; but if this is a tooltip, why not simply use a tooltip ?

> btw: thats like late openstep seemed to do too ( [1] )
>
> what you suggest is to (wait for a new application to launch, and) display 
> help, about what to do in the whole *situation*.

same interpretation here.

> but i think context help is something to describe one specific widget of this 
> situation. such a short help should be displayed instantly and be short.

Well isn't what tooltips are supposedly used for ??
if widgets have differents behaviors for differents situations, I think there 
is something wrong in the UI ... we should avoid ambiguates situation.

For me Context Help is more "what to do in the situation".

> > The question left is how to make HelpViewer  display only a certain,
> > context sensitive portion of the help file. IMO, we must clarify two points
> > here: 1. the API by which HelpViewer is triggered and
> and yet another api to be defined...
>
> we allready have a openstep api for context help.
> we could do it, as described in [1]
> ( context help automatically out of a localized rtf file )

The "API" could be fairly trivial. Just open the file, and send a DO command
to select the right section. But it could be totally internal to GNUstep, eg,
programmers just see the current OpenStep API.
It could perhaps be interessting to have a "helpviewer library" in order to 
have modal panels for that.

We could even provide both methods : use a simple panel and use
helpviewer, it could depend on a default entry.

> > 2. how to make context help available to the user, i.e. what will the user
> > have to press, click, point to to get context help?
> in kde, you have a) a window manager hint, that is not official backed by icccm 
> or ewmh atm, dont know if it will.
> b) a menu entry in help->whats this?
> both will change your cursor and display a '?'
>
> i like both.

I agree, we should provide a key combination and a menu entry (under the
current "help" entry ?)

--
Nicolas Roard <nicolas@roard.com>
http://info.xdev.org/projets/waiho
the linux philosophy is laugh in the face of danger. Oops. Wrong one. 'Do it 
yourself'. That's it.