RE: Quick Help

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc cu-portland edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Mueth [mailto:d-mueth@uchicago.edu]
> Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 9:40 AM
> To: GDP
> Subject: Quick Help
> 
> I'd like to get feedback on an idea for a new component to 
> the GNOME help
> system.  Here it is:
> 
> -----
> GNOME Quick Help
[snip]
> The down side of course is that it makes a lot more work for 
> us, since we
> have to maintain both a user manual and quick help.

Assuming that this gets agreed upon as a "good thing" (TM), I think that the
increased maintenance would be well worth the returns of having more than a
reference manual.  

[snip]
> have specific questions on how to do something.  My impression is that
> most people don't have the patience to sit down and read more 
> than a few
> sentences if they basically know how to use an application 
> and just want a
> question answered.

I think that this is a good idea, but I consider it of secondary importance
to other things.
Specifically, every application should have a COMPREHENSIVE reference
manual, that documents every feature of that application.  This makes for
some huge manuals, but complete at hand documentation is well worth whatever
space it takes.  I believe that this is mostly complete for the apps that
ship with the core of GNOME.
The second critical piece of help is context sensitive help.  GNOME is
completely lacking in this area.  There needs to be a way that I can click
on a help button, and then click on something on my GNOME desktop, or my
GNOME/GTK+ app, and get a brief description, and a link to a more complete
description in the reference manual.
It's great to offer task based documentation, but I feel that complete
reference manuals and context sensitive help are more important, and more
pressing, than small "how do I get this done" segments.  If others don't
agree with me, I'll be happy to go along with the quick help, I've got some
ideas on how to structure that as well.  Later,
	Greg