Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-26 Thread Alexia Death
On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 4:28 AM, Liam R E Quin l...@holoweb.net wrote:
 I wonder if there's a half-way possibility, of having a small
 subset of the documentation shipped with GIMP, or easily
 downloaded? And still have the full manual kept separate.

I actually like the idea. IF we could have maunals for all major bits,
like tools and basic concepts, core help, not more that 10MB, shiped
with gimp and rest avalable for download, then most bases would be
covered. Peraps web help usage stats can help us see what help files
are most requested.

Another thing, pehraps worth considering is caching help. If auser has
asked for it and downloaded it, it should remain localy available.


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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-26 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 10/26/2009 01:42 PM, g...@catking.net wrote:
 Maybe you'd see it better if the checkbox (AHH shoot this man , he said
 the C word!!) was labelled remember this choice.
 
 You can't presume what the correct answer is and impose it on everyone
 since the answer depends on the user himself and availability of
 connection (and in view of the size you'd better add available bandwidth).
 
 So there's a choice the USER not the GUI designer needs to make.

This not necessarily true. If the GUI designer is designing an app
aiding in translating movies then he can deduct from the target user
group that such a dialog box should not be shown. The translator
using the app must hear see/hear all words.

GUI designers always design for a well specified target group. With a
well defined user group there is rarely a need to guess what the user of an
app will want, the GUI designer knows what the users will want.

But there are always exceptions and corner cases of course...

 / Martin

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-26 Thread gg
Martin Nordholts wrote:
 On 10/25/2009 11:35 PM, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
 If you think the dialogue is nagging, it is better to make a checkbox
 do not show this again, show online help directly.  AND, maybe,
 never show the same dialogue in the same session.
 
 It won't nag me less just because I can dismiss it for the future.
 Either the dialog presents important information that I need to see,
 or it doesn't and I don't need to see it.
 
 These Don't show this any more-dialog boxes is a sign
 of insecureness in the personality of the application. We
 don't want GIMP to be like that, we want GIMP to be confident
 it what it is doing.
 
 Regards,
 Martin
 

There is some truth in this approach but it should not be taken to 
extremes. It is not a black or white decision.

This is all part of the KDE-configure everything v. 
gnome-we-know-best-so-like-it flames.

This binary approach to the issue means both ways run a danger of 
getting it wrong.

Specifically it is not to be regarded as a personality disorder. That's 
because the situation changes , hence the user's needs may change.

Maybe you'd see it better if the checkbox (AHH shoot this man , he said 
the C word!!) was labelled remember this choice.

You can't presume what the correct answer is and impose it on everyone 
since the answer depends on the user himself and availability of 
connection (and in view of the size you'd better add available bandwidth).

So there's a choice the USER not the GUI designer needs to make. Asking 
the same question every time he hits F1 may well be a PITA before long. 
I see a legitimate user for errm . one of the square things with an 
X in it .

We are the knights who say checkbox !

Ni ! Ni! Ni!

(cultural reference to Monty Python's 'Holy Grail' for the non English 
subscribers)

It's a user configuration if you will. This could be hidden ten layers 
deep like setting the mouse wheel to zoom in , a far better solution 
would seem to let the user configure how he wants to deal with this 
situation when it is first presented.


Maybe a better overall approach would be to pop up the help menu on F1 
if no help is available. This presents the full choice of options.

Other small defect, Sh-F1 goes into cursor selection knowing full well 
it can't fulfil. This probably should be trapped on key stoke without 
letting the user select then telling him there's no help.

/gg/



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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-26 Thread gg
Martin Nordholts wrote:
 On 10/26/2009 01:42 PM, g...@catking.net wrote:
 Maybe you'd see it better if the checkbox (AHH shoot this man , he said
 the C word!!) was labelled remember this choice.

 You can't presume what the correct answer is and impose it on everyone
 since the answer depends on the user himself and availability of
 connection (and in view of the size you'd better add available bandwidth).

 So there's a choice the USER not the GUI designer needs to make.
 
 This not necessarily true. 

Which is what I said in the bit you don't quote

If the GUI designer is designing an app
 aiding in translating movies then he can deduct from the target user
 group that such a dialog box should not be shown. The translator
 using the app must hear see/hear all words.

But we're taking about GIMP help not some other hypothetical case about 
movie translation.

 
 GUI designers always design for a well specified target group. With a
 well defined user group there is rarely a need to guess what the user of an
 app will want, the GUI designer knows what the users will want.



GUI designers always  well defined user group   GUI designer knows 
what the users will want.

an impressive collection of fairly meaningless hand-wavy generalities. 
What is your point w.r.t. whether the user wants to be asked what gimp 
help format is actually applicable n his actual situation and whether a 
GUI designer can user pro-active telepathy to know his needs and 
internet access availability?

 But there are always exceptions and corner cases of course...
 
  / Martin
 

Call it a corner case if you prefer , how does this relate to gimp help?

thx.
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[Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread photocomix
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:03 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

 IMO the real solution is to shop documentation with GIMP.

Ship, that is :)

Alexandre

YES !!

And anyway label the gimp help as additional packadge is pure nonsense:
for complex graphic software as Gimp the help is not something
additional but is strictly needed





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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 10/25/2009 04:13 PM, photocomix wrote:
 On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:03 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

 IMO the real solution is to shop documentation with GIMP.

 Ship, that is :)

 Alexandre
 
 YES !!

I agree, distributing documentation separately for a program
like GIMP never made much sense to me

 / Martin

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Sven Neumann
On Sun, 2009-10-25 at 16:19 +0100, Martin Nordholts wrote:
 On 10/25/2009 04:13 PM, photocomix wrote:
  On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:03 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
 
  IMO the real solution is to shop documentation with GIMP.
 
  Ship, that is :)
 
  Alexandre
  
  YES !!
 
 I agree, distributing documentation separately for a program
 like GIMP never made much sense to me

You are ignoring two facts here:

(1) The user manual is a separate project with its development cycle
and release dates. If we really insist on shipping the manual
with GIMP, then we would have to wait for the user manual to be
ready. For GIMP 2.6 that would have meant to delay the release
for almost a year.

(2) The user manual is a lot larger than the program itself. If we
insisted on shipping the user manual with each release of GIMP,
then installing a bug-fix for GIMP would require a download of
about 275MB compared to the 16MB that you'd have to download
now.

IMO you are making a problem here that does not any longer exist. Not
having a release of the user manual for 2.6 was indeed a problem, but
that has finally been solved recently. Instead of complaining we should
thank the GIMP documentation team for their hard work. And we should
thank Jernej for providing installers for the user manual.

It would be a good idea though to discuss what can be done to make sure
that help for 2.8 will be available around the time that 2.8 is
released. But this is a discussion that belongs to the gimp-docs
mailing-list.


Sven


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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Michael Schumacher
Sven Neumann wrote:

 IMO you are making a problem here that does not any longer exist. Not
 having a release of the user manual for 2.6 was indeed a problem, but
 that has finally been solved recently. Instead of complaining we should
 thank the GIMP documentation team for their hard work. And we should
 thank Jernej for providing installers for the user manual.

The installers are created with Inoosetup, and this tools allows
downloadable parts. I've used this once for a small utility which was
updated frequently. This happened in a controlled environment, though.

I would rather see an additional page in the current installer than an
installer that's double or triple the current size.


Michael

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Wiki  http://wiki.gimp.org | .de: http://gimpforum.de
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 10/25/2009 05:26 PM, Sven Neumann wrote:
 On Sun, 2009-10-25 at 16:19 +0100, Martin Nordholts wrote:
 On 10/25/2009 04:13 PM, photocomix wrote:
 On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:03 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

 IMO the real solution is to shop documentation with GIMP.

 Ship, that is :)

 Alexandre

 YES !!

 I agree, distributing documentation separately for a program
 like GIMP never made much sense to me
 
 You are ignoring two facts here:

My reply was a bit hasty and I apologize. Thanks to the
documentation team and Jernej for their hard work.

Keeping the documentation online is in many ways a good idea.
There is one thing we could do better though. Right now
when pressing F1 without a locally installed copy of the
manual there is a dialog box that says you don't have
a copy of the GIMP user manual installed with a button
to go to the online manual. IMO we should take the user
directly to the online manual and not nag her with dialogs.

I've talked to guiguru about this previously and to get
this to work good is a more work than it initially feels
like.

 / Martin

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Sven Neumann
Ni,

On Sun, 2009-10-25 at 17:46 +0100, Martin Nordholts wrote:

 Keeping the documentation online is in many ways a good idea.
 There is one thing we could do better though. Right now
 when pressing F1 without a locally installed copy of the
 manual there is a dialog box that says you don't have
 a copy of the GIMP user manual installed with a button
 to go to the online manual. IMO we should take the user
 directly to the online manual and not nag her with dialogs.

We only show this dialog once. If you confirm that you want to use the
online version, then you won't see that dialog again. I don't think
that's too bad. The dialog makes it clear what's happening and it serves
as a hint that the manual can also be installed locally. Removing this
dialog would be a regression.


Sven


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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 10/25/2009 08:13 PM, Sven Neumann wrote:
 We only show this dialog once. If you confirm that you want to use the
 online version, then you won't see that dialog again. I don't think
 that's too bad. The dialog makes it clear what's happening and it serves
 as a hint that the manual can also be installed locally. Removing this
 dialog would be a regression.

If the user presses F1 he is interested in getting help, not being
informed that the information he will be reading is not locally
installed.

The possibility to install the manual locally becomes
interesting if there is no internet connection for example.

 / Martin

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Alexia Death
On Sunday 25 October 2009 21:21:45 Martin Nordholts wrote:
 If the user presses F1 he is interested in getting help, not being
 informed that the information he will be reading is not locally
 installed.
True.
 
 The possibility to install the manual locally becomes
 interesting if there is no internet connection for example.
And thats where the poke is. when there is no internet connection, you cant 
get a locally installable help either. Sort of a deadlock.

-- Alexia
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On 10/25/09, Martin Nordholts wrote:

 My reply was a bit hasty and I apologize. Thanks to the
 documentation team and Jernej for their hard work.

I don't think your reply was hasty :) Having documentation available
at once is actually expected.

Provided the documentation project is a separate one indeed, I see two
solutions:

1. Make it downloadable during installation, like Michael suggests.
2. Leave .exe files where they are now, but keep amount of clicks to
download .exe with docs as low as possible.

Option 1 needs suboptions for every supported language, perhaps.
That's a question to Jernej, I guess.

Alexandre
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-25, Martin Nordholts ense...@gmail.com wrote:
 Keeping the documentation online is in many ways a good idea.

A bad idea for people who are most of the time on the road without
online access...

 There is one thing we could do better though. Right now
 when pressing F1 without a locally installed copy of the
 manual there is a dialog box that says you don't have
 a copy of the GIMP user manual installed with a button
 to go to the online manual.

A good thing.  Yet better thing would be have a button with install
local copy.

Yet better would be if GIMP could try to check the connection, and
would stop showing press f1 for help if there is no local copy and
no connection...

 IMO we should take the user directly to the online manual and not
 nag her with dialogs.

If you think the dialogue is nagging, it is better to make a checkbox
do not show this again, show online help directly.  AND, maybe,
never show the same dialogue in the same session.

Yours,
Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 10/25/2009 11:35 PM, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
 If you think the dialogue is nagging, it is better to make a checkbox
 do not show this again, show online help directly.  AND, maybe,
 never show the same dialogue in the same session.

It won't nag me less just because I can dismiss it for the future.
Either the dialog presents important information that I need to see,
or it doesn't and I don't need to see it.

These Don't show this any more-dialog boxes is a sign
of insecureness in the personality of the application. We
don't want GIMP to be like that, we want GIMP to be confident
it what it is doing.

Regards,
Martin

-- 

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http://www.chromecode.com/

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-25 Thread Liam R E Quin
On Sun, 2009-10-25 at 22:30 +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
[...]
 Provided the documentation project is a separate one indeed, I see two
 solutions:
 
 1. Make it downloadable during installation, like Michael suggests.
 2. Leave .exe files where they are now, but keep amount of clicks to
 download .exe with docs as low as possible.

I wonder if there's a half-way possibility, of having a small
subset of the documentation shipped with GIMP, or easily
downloaded? And still have the full manual kept separate.

Liam



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Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-22 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 1:39 AM, Sven Neumann wrote:

 This is a very sad situation.  Note that most of users won't be able
 to install GIMP documentation locally [*], and in today's state of
 mobility, people are very often without Internet access...

   [*] Try to understand how to get GIMP docs starting at

         http://www.gimp.org/windows/

       I could not...  (Most probably, *I* would be able to do it if I
       would not decide to restrict access to resources mentioned on
       www.gimp.org...  But most users would be stuck at this point...)

 Oh, come on. If you click on the very first link on this page, you end
 up on http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html which lists installers
 for all the available translations of the user manual for GIMP 2.6.

IMO the real solution is to shop documentation with GIMP. I know we
probably don't have the manpower to, but it's the only solution that
will ever Just Work (TM).

Alexandre
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-22 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:03 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

 IMO the real solution is to shop documentation with GIMP.

Ship, that is :)

Alexandre
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-21 Thread Sven Neumann
On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 00:41 +, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:

 This is a very sad situation.  Note that most of users won't be able
 to install GIMP documentation locally [*], and in today's state of
 mobility, people are very often without Internet access...
 
   [*] Try to understand how to get GIMP docs starting at
 
 http://www.gimp.org/windows/
 
   I could not...  (Most probably, *I* would be able to do it if I
   would not decide to restrict access to resources mentioned on
   www.gimp.org...  But most users would be stuck at this point...)

Oh, come on. If you click on the very first link on this page, you end
up on http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html which lists installers
for all the available translations of the user manual for GIMP 2.6.


Sven


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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-21 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-21, Sven Neumann s...@gimp.org wrote:
 This is a very sad situation.  Note that most of users won't be able
 to install GIMP documentation locally [*], and in today's state of
 mobility, people are very often without Internet access...
 
   [*] Try to understand how to get GIMP docs starting at
 
http://www.gimp.org/windows/
 
   I could not...  (Most probably, *I* would be able to do it if I
   would not decide to restrict access to resources mentioned on
   www.gimp.org...  But most users would be stuck at this point...)

 Oh, come on. If you click on the very first link on this page, you end
 up on http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html which lists installers
 for all the available translations of the user manual for GIMP 2.6.

But the point was that I did not want to install GIMP!  I already had
it installed, and wanted just to add documentation...  The
documentation of this link clearly says:

  Note that the user manual is an extra package

So, obviously, I investigated OTHER links on this page...

Yours,
Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-20 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-02, Sven Neumann s...@gimp.org wrote:
   0) Remove Press F1 to view manual from tooltips unless GIMP knows
  that a manual is present, and knows to which page to jump.

 Since GIMP offers to read the manual online, the manual is always
 present. Or rather, it becomes rather difficult to tell whether it is
 present or not.

This is a very sad situation.  Note that most of users won't be able
to install GIMP documentation locally [*], and in today's state of
mobility, people are very often without Internet access...

  [*] Try to understand how to get GIMP docs starting at

  http://www.gimp.org/windows/

  I could not...  (Most probably, *I* would be able to do it if I
  would not decide to restrict access to resources mentioned on
  www.gimp.org...  But most users would be stuck at this point...)

  Do not you find this see above very frustrating?

 Same goes for the decision on whether the manual covers
 this topic. The core knows nothing about that and the gather that
 knowledge, it needs to download the manual index.

So before the index is downloaded, the message in tooltips should
better be modified accordingly.  More help MIGHT be available by
pressing F1 or some such...  And then, a need to download the index
should be clearly indicated to the user when F1 is pressed...

 The change you are asking for is definitely not trivial. It might be
 easier to just fix the manual so that it covers help for all help
 IDs.

Including all the scripts I'm going to write?!

Yours,
Ilya

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-20 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
On 2009-10-02, peter sikking pe...@mmiworks.net wrote:
 To make a long story short: 3 stages is, of course, not enough -
 especially with applications which target SIMULTANEOUSLY professionals
 and first-time-Linux-users.

 I understand first-time-Linux-users as really newby linux desktop
 users, not beginner-GIMP-users (we have no priority to design for
 the latter).

  [I suppose you reversed two alternatives; otherwise one gets into a
   remarkable situation, as in: ]

GIMP developers do not care about beginner GIMP users...  Quite a
bold statement...  I suppose it is not shared by all GIMP developers -
including you... ;-)

 the help is there to help with GIMP functionality. not to
 help with the minimal differences of the linux desktop
 with mac and windows UI.

No contest here...

 so I am a bit stuck where the point is...

The point was three-headed:

  First:  help should better be more flexible [*];

  Second: the API changes to support specification of
  variable-level-of-verbosity (and the actual code to
  implement it!) may be quite minuscule [**];

  Third:  GIMP is one of the few applications which explicitly supports
  escalation of help (via the sentence about F1 in tooltips).
  But the current implementation of this support adds more
  confusion than it actually helps.

Yours,
Ilya

[*] As the simplest example: try to add tooltips to argument inputer
for a script registered with script-fu-register; more examples in
OP.

[**] Text on a user control (or tooltip) should be a list of strings
 (instead of a string); to implement, only a minor modification of
 code supporting F1-on-tooltip is needed);


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[Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-02 Thread Ilya Zakharevich
  [Repost after a list resurrection]

As far as I understand, one of the principal usability features is
a progressive escalation of help.  One does not want to drink from a
fire hydrant - unless any other option is exhausted.  One always wants
as little help as possible - as far as it DOES help.

In manuals, it appears, e.g., as distinction of user manual and reference
manual (2 stages of escalation; if manuals are good, they have stages
of escalation inside them as well).  In GUI, it is usually 3 stages:

 Toolbar icon --- Couple-of-words in a tooltip  F1 to manual

 Couple-of-words on a   - Short sentence    F1 to manual
 a button or menu entryin a tooltip
 or a slider label

In Emacs, it appears as a requirement that the first line of documentation
of a function/variable should be readable by itself.

To make a long story short: 3 stages is, of course, not enough -
especially with applications which target SIMULTANEOUSLY professionals
and first-time-Linux-users.  (And many components of GIMP have as
little as 1 stage; consider user controls of script-fu-register.)  How
to create extra stages without making users to learn new paradigms?

If you think about it for a second, the solution would jump at you:
tooltips should be gradually extensible - when you press F1 with a
tooltip shown, the tooltip should expand to the next level; when all
the levels are exhausted, it should start the manual viewer.

Tooltips which know how to expand should have a visual feedback.
(IMO a small square with F1 in UR corner should be enough.)  Tooltips
which would expand to manual should be also visually distinguishable
(with something like Press F1 to view manual, as in GIMP - only in
GIMP, this message is completely borken).

What is the least intrusive way to introduce this to GIMP?  What about:

  0) Remove Press F1 to view manual from tooltips unless GIMP knows
 that a manual is present, and knows to which page to jump.

(Most annoying when GIMP already failed to start a manual
 system, and/or when a tooltip is shown on a Script-Fu UI
 element which DEFINITELY has no idea how to show a manual.)

  1)  Allow the UI-strings in script-fu-register to be lists instead of
  strings.  A list entry may be a string (to show as a tooltip),
  a list of the form (URL http://...;) - for the last element (may
  be a relative URL w.r.t. user manual, as in (URL manual:gimpedit_paste)

  1a) Optionally: allow list entries of the form, e.g., (chrome path_to_icon)
  to show iconic labels on SF-FOO UI elements, and/or combine icons
  with text on menu entries.

  1b) Lastly, allow one to inspect whether this functionality is present,
  so one can write

 (script-fu-register my-foo
   My Foo
   (my-escalating-help Do Foo in all the corners Longer help ...)
   ...  Same with SF-BAR labels
 )

  with my-escalating-help() returning the full list, or the first element
  depending on what script-fu-register understands.

  2) When this is implemented (is not it a very minor change?), start to
 add gradually escalating help to GIMP itself.

What do you think?
Ilya




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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-02 Thread peter sikking

Ilya Zakharevich wrote:


To make a long story short: 3 stages is, of course, not enough -
especially with applications which target SIMULTANEOUSLY professionals
and first-time-Linux-users.


I understand first-time-Linux-users as really newby linux desktop
users, not beginner-GIMP-users (we have no priority to design for
the latter).

the help is there to help with GIMP functionality. not to
help with the minimal differences of the linux desktop
with mac and windows UI.

so I am a bit stuck where the point is...

--ps

founder + principal interaction architect
man + machine interface works

http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture





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Re: [Gimp-developer] Progressive escalation of help

2009-10-02 Thread Sven Neumann
On Fri, 2009-10-02 at 06:22 +, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:

   0) Remove Press F1 to view manual from tooltips unless GIMP knows
  that a manual is present, and knows to which page to jump.

Since GIMP offers to read the manual online, the manual is always
present. Or rather, it becomes rather difficult to tell whether it is
present or not. Same goes for the decision on whether the manual covers
this topic. The core knows nothing about that and the gather that
knowledge, it needs to download the manual index. The change you are
asking for is definitely not trivial. It might be easier to just fix the
manual so that it covers help for all help IDs.


Sven


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