Question / Thought about absence of any standard online help

Is there some reason why the myriad tools in Squeak don't have even a
placeholder button or menu item for online help? From my newbies point of
view it is very frustrating to try to do something (refactor to extract a
method with a parameter, most recently) and be confronted with a totally new
editor (Selector editor, in this case) and not have any idea about what the
panels and buttons mean (Up? Down? Ok?). I finally figured it out, but it
took 15 minutes of blind trial and error. It is very disheartening and a
huge hurdle for someone who wants to get started with Squeak.

Shouldn't online help be a standard part of any IDE framework, making it
easy for tool writers to add a few lines of online help in a standard way?
Perhaps include some url links? Heck, if the tool even had a standard link
(e.g. on SystemWindow) to a standard place on a Squeak wikis, anyone (even
me) could contribute to the help.

And yes, I know that getting those lines written is a separate matter.




_______________________________________________
Beginners mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

That sounded a lot like a complaint ... it was not meant to be one! Is there
someplace (current or in the works) for standard rudimentary online help?

"itsme213" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:fgd80g$8vg$[hidden email]...


_______________________________________________
Beginners mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

itsme213 wrote: Hello... umm... Itsme.

I've been using Squeak for a few years and I couldn't agree more.

There are documentation and tutorials at:

http://www.squeak.org/Documentation

This page is the "official" page containing links to Squeak
documentation. There are also books - the old Smalltalk books are still
largely relevant, and the tools are still used in the same way.

If you want to contribute, you can help with the documentation effort:
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2983

The community would also welcome code contributions, more documentation
and discussions on the Squeak mailing list about this. As a group of
volunteers, there's an endemic shortage of time to work on this sort of
thing so any help is appreciated. Online help from within the Squeak
environment would be very useful!

Gulik.
_______________________________________________
Beginners mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

Hello itsyou213,

>> Is there some reason why the myriad tools in Squeak don't have even a
>> placeholder button or menu item for online help? From my newbies point of

Squeak has balloon help which is like windows hints but bigger. This
is easy to attach to any morph.

>> view it is very frustrating to try to do something (refactor to extract a
>> method with a parameter, most recently) and be confronted with a totally
>> new editor (Selector editor, in this case) and not have any idea about
>> what the panels and buttons mean (Up? Down? Ok?). I finally figured it

They have balloon help, just hover over the button.

>> out, but it took 15 minutes of blind trial and error. It is very
>> disheartening and a huge hurdle for someone who wants to get started with
>> Squeak.
That one took long for me too and I still haven't written a note so
it's a bit of try and error every time I use it. With the other tools
I had no such problems. Pretty much know one know all.

As for documentation: search the swiki (wiki.squeak.org) for
documentation team or contact Matthew Fulmer if you want to help.

And with Squeak by example from Stephane Ducasse Squeak has a recent and
up to date introduction.

Anyway, Welcome here!

Cheers

Herbert                            mailto:[hidden email]

_______________________________________________
Beginners mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

> Squeak has balloon help which is like windows hints but bigger. This
> is easy to attach to any morph.

Good point. I still think newbies would benefit a lot from a standard help
button or menu item, even if it results in just showing a class comment or
launching a browser to a relevant wiki page (help within Squeak linking to
wiki pages would be more helpful than just the wiki).

Thanks for the info.



_______________________________________________
Beginners mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners