This is cooooooool
I like the little icon :)
and of course the help on help
What is needed at runtime
only the HelpTopic?
Excellent like that we can include it by default.
Now may be this is stupid idea but I would love to the first page when I click
on a tree so that the help space is never empty.
Some feedback now :)
- do we need to create all these classes ? TranscriptHelp... I
understand that you use a class as a node in your tree.
- I imagine that we could build dynamic pages
pages
^#(whatIsAWorkspace openAWorkspace)
=>
pages
^ Pragma .... with tag for help
Could we have a way that pages returns not only a selector but
a class*selector
so that we could them have the help distributed and not only in
the Workspace class
we could then do something like
class perform: selector to get back the contents of a
HelpTopic or something like that
So I like it :)
Stef
On Mar 28, 2010, at 10:39 PM, Torsten Bergmann wrote:
> Hi,
>
> sorry for the delay on the help system - but time is
> rare these days.
>
> I know some of you are impatient - therefore I've commited my
> restructured code for the help system for you to look what
> is coming - even when it is not fully finished. But the restructured
> new model is now in place - I have to add more tests and
> adapt the "help on the help system" to document my ideas.
> I also want to work on compatibility with Squeak as the
> first version had. Currently the new stuff only work
> in Pharo.
>
> What is new
> ===========
> While we had 3 model classes in my initial version (and after
> Dannys additions even more classes) I now reduced the model
> to a very, very simple approach with just one model class.
>
> We now have a HelpBrowser that is "just" displaying topics.
> A topic (see class HelpTopic) is
>
> - providing a title and optionally an icon
> - able to have subtopics,
> - provides contents (that is displayed be the browser),
> - can be identified by a unique key (so we can later open the
> help browser on a specific topic from within other tools)
>
> You can create help topics from each and anything.
>
>
> To try it out just load the baseline (in Pharo 1.0 or 1.1):
>
> --------------------------------------------
> Gofer new
> squeaksource: 'MetacelloRepository';
> package: 'ConfigurationOfHelpSystem';
> load.
>
> ((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfHelpSystem) project version: '1.0-baseline')
> load
> --------------------------------------------
>
>
> You can open the help browser from the world tool menu or via
> code:
>
> HelpBrowser open
>
> You can open the help browser on any object that is able to
> be converted into a help topic (via method #asHelpTopic).
>
> So you can write for instance:
>
> HelpBrowser openOn: Integer
>
> opening a short API help/system reference on the Integer class.
> The above expression is the short form for:
>
> HelpBrowser openOn: (SystemReference forClass: Integer)
>
> If you want you can include the subclasses:
>
> HelpBrowser openOn: (SystemReference hierarchyFor: Integer)
>
> or even methods
>
> HelpBrowser openOn: (SystemReference hierarchyWithMethodsFor: Integer)
>
> You can browse the whole system reference documentation using:
>
> HelpBrowser openOn: SystemReference
>
> But these are only a few examples what we can extract from the
> system.
>
> However - the major goal is NOT an API browser, the idea is to
> provide a simple architecture to provide browsable help contents
> depending on the context. For instance it should also be possible
> to use the help system to provide end user help on any commercial
> application that is written with Pharo.
>
> As I said you can convert any text data into topics to be displayed
> by the help system: the browser is able to open on anything that
> is convertable to a root topic using #asHelpTopic. More on this later.
>
> When you open the help browser it provides help for the
> whole system, so
>
> HelpBrowser open
>
> is the same as
>
> HelpBrowser openOn: SystemHelp
>
> which internally uses the class CustomHelp and subclasses to provide
> written text and API help to form a system wide help system.
>
> If you want you can also load "Metacello-Help" and "Squeak-Help"
> from the http://www.squeaksource.com/HelpSystem repository to see
> how the new topics are automatically used when they were just loaded.
>
>
> Yes, I would like to see a richer text support (using markup
> language) and written text documentation accessible directly
> from within the image. But the first step was to get a simple
> model, the next step would be to see if the extension mechanism
> is good enough (CustomHelp, HelpBuilder with own builders, ...)
>
>
> Some more notes on the architecture and extension ideas:
> ========================================================
> 1. the model as I said before is now reduced to a single class
> (HelpTopic)
>
> 2. When you open the help browser on an object the method #asHelpTopic
> is sent to the object by the browser to get the root node of
> the displayed topic hierarchy:
>
> HelpBrowser openOn: myObject
>
> Typically the object does not convert itself to a help topic structure,
> usually it dispatches to a builder (see HelpBuilder and subclasses)
> who does all this.
>
> So the help text can be already in the image even when the help
> system itself is NOT YET THERE/LOADED and if you want to provide help text
> in whatever form you are not dependent on the help system itself!!!
>
> Later a builder can extract and convert the data. You can have builders
> for anything - even a builder who gets informations from the web or
> hard disk.
>
> But note: if you want to have your own help shown up in the
> standard help then you have to at least use the "CustomHelp" subclass
> mechanism.
>
> 3. The help browser is a simple tree view and is currently limited to
> ASCII text. One step in the future could be to provide a "contentType"
> (similar to MIME) to support other content types (for instance active
> morphs displayed in clean up book morphs, HTML help with scamper in
> the help browser, ...)
>
> 4. I dont expect the basic model to change much further - maybe
>
> Take care: all of this is still unfinished but in a usable state.
> The "Help on Help" is not yet updated. The tests are not reviewed,
> just brouht to green.
>
> So you have to rely on the implementation, all the informations
> in this mail or directly ask questions.
>
> Bye
> Torsten
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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>
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