RE: ANNOUNCE: Style Guide available for review.

[Paul Hepworth <phepworth s-vision com>]

	...[?] button. Besides, I have seen this under win95. Not only
do
> some progs not support it, those programs that do, often do not have
> it
> available to every widget in the window! It is just a long tooltip
> anyway.
> And not necessary. If an app has a menubar, it must have a help menu.
> If a
> dialog-type app has no menubar, it must provide a help button. Doesn't
> this
> tool help really belong in the documentation anyway? 
> 
Actually, I like it quite a bit.  I don't like to fire up the whole help
engine and wade through the description of the entire dialog.  I like
being able to get a quick "what is this for & how do I use it" in a
nutshell.  Tooltips say somethings label, but not really what it is nor
how to use it.
The "wade through help" thing could be mitigated by having truly
context-sensitive help, though.  (But most apps consider the entire
dialog to be context enough; I disagree -- the dialog should be the help
page, but the control I'm hovering over / have given kbd focus should
indicate the tag within the page.  I.e. context should be by control,
not by dialog.)
Now, if you don't like [?]-style help, you have your wm decline to use
that button (and you don't get to use that style of help).
I would say "force" is too strong of a word.  How about "encourage wm's
to give the user the option of including a help frame button?"  Since
this would be optional, we would have to require the "Help" button in
dialog apps without menus.


Paul