Re: new help browser

[Dan Mueth <d-mueth uchicago edu>]

On Wed, 31 May 2000, Alexander Kirillov wrote:
> On Wed, May 31, 2000 at 05:04:48PM -0500, Eric Baudais wrote:
[snip]
> > I think it would be appropriate to only have one definition for all
> > identical words currently on the screen.  I'd like to see the glossary
> > or index as a dynamic part of the doc.  So if symlink is on the screen
> > there would be a definition some place on the screen.  If the user moved
> > to the next page, and symlink wasn't in that page, the definition would
> > disappear and be replaced by the appropriate definitions for words that
> > were in that particular page the user was looking at.
> 
> The only problem with this is that then the help browser needs to grep
> through all the words on screen and compare them with the glossary all
> the time. Another version of the same idea is that  for each <sect1> (or the
> whole document?) of a document, make a list of all the words in it
> that might need explaining, so that when you read, say, a section on
> GMC, in the left pane you have a list of words in this section that
> appear in the glossary (symlink, mount point, etc); you can click on
> any of them, and it will show you a definition? I think, it is a
> better idea than actually having all occurences of the word symlink
> somehow highlighted so that the reader needs to click on it.

Having a list of glossary words appear in the left(navigation) pane would
mean that it replaces whichever navigation tool the user was using.  It
also seems to break the control heirarchy.  I like the consistancy of
having the left pane control the right pane.  In this new picture, the
flow would bounce back and forth between the left pane changing the right
pane and the right pane changing the left pane. I think generally people
expect items at the left/top to control things to the right/bottom, so if
we follow the two pane navigation/view metaphor, we probably should follow
these conventions if possible.

Generally multiple definitions cannot fit on the left, so, as Sasha
states, there would just be a list of words in the navigation pane.  In
this case it does not seem to be any more convenient in terms of mouse
travel, since the user still has to select which word he/she would like to
see the definition of - so it does not make definitions easier to access.  
It also seems to be more work for the user, since the reader must compare
the words in the right pane with those in the left pane to identify which
ones are in the glossary.  It seems like a lot of this is avoided by just
highlighting/coloring the word in the right pane to indicate that it is in
a glossary.

Dan