On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 17:33 +0100, Uwe Fischer wrote:
Hi Regina,
Regina Henschel wrote:
I have uploaded a document now.
I have copied the text from a browser into a writer document and have
written my additions and changes in green. Is such a form useful for
you? Or should I work on a xhp-file directly? That would be a little bit
difficult, because I can read such a file, but know nothing about the
special syntax.
thank you for your first file.
Some remarks:
I would prefer the main page of chart to be a kind of table of index
only, the same way the other modules' main000 files work.
We might dicuss if we really need example data to build example charts
in the Help. In my view, this is not necessary. Users who open Help
don't normally want to learn something about the software, but they want
a precise and immediate answer with 1-2-3 steps to solve their problem.
We can add a link in the Help to a (printed)|(pdf) guide with examples
and pictures on the Web instead.
The Help needs to be as short as possible, while a guide on the Web can
even offer some story plots and elaborated office tasks with solutions
to keep the reader motivated ;-)
Don't mind about xhp file format; I can copy your files to that format
and take care for the CVS commits. You can use some high-level info
wherever you want a hyperlink to another file - if I can identify the
target I'll insert the correct hyperlink then.
In cws chart2mst3 you can already find the Chart Wizard help in folder
schart/01, among other changes.
there is a new choose_chart_type.xhp file now with some info about the
chart types. I started writing this file this morning, and then
discovered it gets too large. So next I will break this file up into
different files, one for each chart type.
Then it would be a good idea to have only one of us working on the new
chart. So I suggest I will step back next week and let you proceed with
writing chart help files. Then, may be in January, we can find out how
to organize the new files into a nice Help structure. What do you think?
I found them. I added the main-transform.xsl to make them read better.
Is there another way? Can they be integrated into an existing help?
in theory, any xhp file can be added to the correct *.jar file in an
installed help folder. Add hyperlinks from existing files to browse to
that file. It will not be included in index and full text search,
however. You must build the module helpcontent2 of the CWS and then
extract the resulting zip files into an installed help folder to have an
all new Help.
Now that we started to change the Help in the chart CWS chart2mst3, the
next built installation file sets will contain the new Help as well as
any new changes to chart.
It seems, that the files contain only extended help texts. They are far
away from that, what I would expect from a guide.
The new chart currently has the target OOo 3. For that version, the Help
is intended to get a redesign, see issue 52158. Chart Help follows the
new structure:
- all controls get hidden extended help texts.
- pressing F1 or the Help button in a dialog opens Help according to the
Help ID of the focused control. But the user should read a guide instead
of the old reference pages. So we include the guide instructions in the
former Help reference files as visible text, with the extended help
texts hidden text. An example: User sees Chart Wizard page 1. The
subtype control (with the three or four icons to choose from) has the
focus. User presses F1 or clicks Help button. Help Id of the subtype
control triggers the following Help file: wiz_chart_type.xhp, because
the Help ID is there. Text on that page contains a Guide on how to use
this wizard page, plus all necessary links. User points to the subtype
control and presses Shift+F1: the extended help appears and shows the
text that follows the Help ID on the same help page, between AHID tags.
Therefore I first
added a description of the chart types to the main-file. One great
problem with charts I knew from newsgroups is, that people use the wrong
chart type, especially line instead of XY-chart.
The XY-charts are very different from the others and therefore I think,
that they need a special guide. Do you agree? If yes, which form of
guide would you prefer (see A,B,C in my first post)?
Yes, for sure XY charts need special handling in the Help. As do stock
charts.
Again, I think long guides with examples and illustrations are better
suited as pdf files. Keep explanation and info on how and why using
chart types as short as possible for the Help. But this is only my
opinion and we can discuss this.
I agree too. This is why the doc project has a user guide in progress
and also why we track the on-line help. The new charting module does
offer some challenges but I believe that by
