Thursday, January 15, 2009, 3:23:17 PM, Hussein Shafie wrote: > Daniel Dekany wrote: >> I guess we agree in that this is a product with a very steep *initial* >> learning curve due to its unusual approach. Still, the documentation >> under the Help menu is just a reference, it doesn't contain the User's >> Guide (http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/user/index.html). >> I think that an as little thing as adding a "User's Guide" menu item >> (or better, a "Getting Started" menu item -- who cares about the >> installation procedure and like when it was already done) directly >> under the "Help" menu could help many potential users to get through >> that initial shock, rather than becoming frustrated quickly and try >> the next product on the list. Most users who are not some kind of >> company decision makers certainly will not look for further help >> elsewhere. (I guess that it would be even worthwhile to invest into >> creating a new, more effective kick-start tutorial, maybe even >> aggressively pop it up at first start.) >> > > We fully agree with your suggestion and we will almost certainly > implement it in the near future. > > There is one thing which prevented us from adding more documentation > (e.g. the tutorial) to the online help: the lack of quality of Java Help > in terms of HTML rendering. We find the documentation displayed in the > Java Help window painful to read. We are currently investigating to find > an alternative to Java Help (Oracle Help? Simply use the Web browser of > the user? Implement a Help window using XMLmind XML Editor components?)
Maybe you are in a special status in this regard, because your product line is in big part about rendering and navigating in complex XML documents. Currently XXE has problems with the last (well, mostly with the last). Like, there is no "back button" like in browsers (I know it's harder as with read-only HTML, but still not impossible, and truly missing), etc. So if you develop and use your own help system on "we eat our own dog food" basis, XXE could benefit from it, I guess. Editing complex documentations and reading/searching docs are not far away from each other (for the user anyway), yet sometimes I have the feeling that there is separation of this two fields only out of tradition. With other words, if XXE excels in that, basically you already have your help system. (Oh, and in your case no conversion to HTML is needed... could help mining and presenting the information; you work directly with DITA or DocBook or whatever you are using.) > Once again, thank you very much for your suggestions. -- Best regards, Daniel Dekany
