On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 08:47:34PM +0100, Andreas Jung wrote: > > > --On 20. Dezember 2005 14:27:18 -0500 Paul Winkler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > >just to be clear, the stuff I'm talking about is ZMI user interface > >docs, not programmer docs. > > I'll raise the question again: what are the benefits of the HelpSys for a > Zope user? I just clicked through the HelpSys (I've never used and missed > it > throughout my Zope career) and all the unorganized information in the > HelpSys are more or less in the same way available in the Zope Book (ZPT, > DTML references etc.).
The big difference is that in many places in the ZMI, clicking "help" takes you to instructions *for the management page you are actually looking at*. Just because you and I have internalized all this information long ago does not mean it isn't useful to new users. I haven't looked at any of it recently because I don't need to anymore. But I remember when I *did* need to. The users affected most by this change are not going to be on zope-dev. Maybe I was a rare case and nobody else ever reads the help pages. I don't think we will find out by arguing about it here. Maybe a straw poll on the main zope list would teach us something? Something like "Did you, at some point while learning Zope, get anything useful from the help system?". > - additional information and story telling should be done through doc tests For general "what is this / what does it do / how does it work" docs, I like that idea. But it doesn't help with filling out forms in the ZMI. Arguably, forms should be self-documenting, but the nice thing about a "help" link is that it doesn't distract you when you don't need it any more. -- Paul Winkler http://www.slinkp.com _______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
