Rethinking Help

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Rethinking Help

Squeak - Dev mailing list
Hi Folks.

Just a brainstorm here.

We ask Objects and Classes for stuff every day. What if we could send them the "help" message?

OrderedCollection help.
1 help.
'1' help.
Stream help.
CompiledMethod help.
Pragma help.


Frameworks...

Seaside help.
PEGParser help.
Xtreams help.
SUnit help
VMMaker help
OSProcess help.

"Any package category in the browser" help.

What if Lawson English' videos where available right in the OpenGL package?
OpenGL help.


Make complicated design patterns, like the Tree traversal stuff folks on the pharo boards are discussing objects.

Tree help.
FactoryPattern help
SingletonPattern help.


Furthermore, make it trivial for anybody to directly write the help into the object. (This is a huge drawback for the current Help system. I do not want to program Help topics, I want to cut-n-paste some text very quickly)

For example, Levente has been very helpful in providing advice on using the XTreams-Parsing package.
It would be very helpful, to just copy-n-paste the emails/conversations  as they happen into the Package's help.

Ditto for PG3. 

PG3 help viewall
PG3 help byDate.
PG3 help latest
PG3 help authors


Make sense?


Class comments are frequently empty stubs.

Furthermore, we have billions (: of smalltalkers out there. Make it easy for them to "commit" their help into the core system on squeaksource from within the image (or make it semi-automatic)

I think it would be a great first-step for aggregating help content and making it easily accessible from within a Workspace.

I honestly "never" use the Help system as I find it awkward and inefficient to read and code. However, for those who do enjoy it, an in-image aggregation system would help its development too.

cordially,

tty








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Re: Rethinking Help

Chris Muller-3
Hi Timothy,

You can currently #openHelpBrowser on any class.  This selector is
descriptive while not presuming what #help should do, a word external
frameworks may already have their own ideas and implementations of.

I personally feel that help needs to be written, but Squeak Help can
already be directly edited including copy and paste from emails.


 - Chris

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 2:40 PM gettimothy via Squeak-dev
<[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> Hi Folks.
>
> Just a brainstorm here.
>
> We ask Objects and Classes for stuff every day. What if we could send them the "help" message?
>
> OrderedCollection help.
> 1 help.
> '1' help.
> Stream help.
> CompiledMethod help.
> Pragma help.
>
>
> Frameworks...
>
> Seaside help.
> PEGParser help.
> Xtreams help.
> SUnit help
> VMMaker help
> OSProcess help.
>
> "Any package category in the browser" help.
>
> What if Lawson English' videos where available right in the OpenGL package?
> OpenGL help.
>
>
> Make complicated design patterns, like the Tree traversal stuff folks on the pharo boards are discussing objects.
>
> Tree help.
> FactoryPattern help
> SingletonPattern help.
>
>
> Furthermore, make it trivial for anybody to directly write the help into the object. (This is a huge drawback for the current Help system. I do not want to program Help topics, I want to cut-n-paste some text very quickly)
>
> For example, Levente has been very helpful in providing advice on using the XTreams-Parsing package.
> It would be very helpful, to just copy-n-paste the emails/conversations  as they happen into the Package's help.
>
> Ditto for PG3.
>
> PG3 help viewall
> PG3 help byDate.
> PG3 help latest
> PG3 help authors
>
>
> Make sense?
>
>
> Class comments are frequently empty stubs.
>
> Furthermore, we have billions (: of smalltalkers out there. Make it easy for them to "commit" their help into the core system on squeaksource from within the image (or make it semi-automatic)
>
> I think it would be a great first-step for aggregating help content and making it easily accessible from within a Workspace.
>
> I honestly "never" use the Help system as I find it awkward and inefficient to read and code. However, for those who do enjoy it, an in-image aggregation system would help its development too.
>
> cordially,
>
> tty
>
>
>
>
>
>
>