Re: "What's this"

[Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com>]

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Cristian Tibirna wrote:

> > Has anyone implemented or considered implementing the Windows feature
> > where the frame has a ? on it, and you click that to enter "What's
> > this" mode and can then get help on stuff in the window? (Or is it a
> > global mode and you can get help on anything onscreen?)
>
> KDE has it all over the place. You actually get help only for the widgets for
> which you write "what's this" information explicitely, in KDE. But I believe
> this could be implemented otherwise in other places.
>
> > Seems like we could have a simple protocol enabling this.
>
> Hmm?
>
> Isn't this in the new NET spec already?

KDE just uses the Qt hack that does it in one process only. Doing that is
easy and irrelevant to this list. A reasonable requirement would be for a
"what's this" solution to work inter-application, which would mean coming
up with an X protocol to do it.

I started looking at this for gnome-libs once - the way I was thinking of
doing it was having cursor feedback similar to DnD to point out areas that
help can be given for, plus a way to tell the clicked-on area to show its
help, once it is clicked.

-- Elliot
These three lines
	are for sale
		at the rate of $50/month.