What should the user see? (Was: ANNOUNCE : HelpViewer 0.1)

[Jonathan Gapen]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003 discuss-gnustep-request@gnu.org wrote:
> Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 13:14:03 +0000
> From: Richard Frith-Macdonald <richard@brainstorm.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE : HelpViewer 0.1

> In an ideal world I'd provide a range of help capabilities like this ...
>
> 1. tooltips ... use NSHelpManager but change it so that the tooltip is
> displayed when the mouse passes over an item rather than when it's
> clicked.

     OPENSTEP has tooltips, too, and they are different than what
NSHelpManager provides though they look superficially similar.  You add a
tooltip with the NSView method -setToolTip:.  It's just an NSString that
appears in a yellow rectangle if the mouse pointer lingers in a view, and
disappears when the mouse pointer moves.
     The context help is set by the NSHelpManager method
-setContextHelp:withObject:.  It's an NSAttributedString that appears in a
yellow rectangle with a drop shadow when the user 'help-clicks' an object,
and disappears upon the next click.

> I'd put the main part of the help display code in NSHelpPanel, and have
> the helpviewer app add the capability to show/search help from
> multiple applications.

     I agree.  As you said, a help panel keeps its state per-application.
     Using the existing API, a helpviewer app could fill up its own help
panel with other apps' help files (ab)using the -addSupplement:inPath:
method, but a more general method which could prove useful is adding a
method to allow apps to generate help items at run-time.
                                ----
     Perhaps it would help (ha! ha!) in this discussion to put aside
issues of external apps vs. panels, DO APIs, file formats and other
implementation issues to focus on the question:  What should the user see?
     In some cases, that's pretty clear:  When using GNUstep as a
cross-platform compatibility layer, the user should see the native help
system.  That's why NeXT invented the NSHelpManager class.  But in a
native GNUstep environment, what?

-- 
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