Re: [platform-help-dev] Help Definition

[birsan@xxxxxxxxxx]

Thierry,

Good questions, see my answers <db>




                                                                                                                   
                    Thierry                                                                                        
                    Matusiak/France/IBM@IBMFR       To:     platform-help-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx                          
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                    platform-help-dev-admin@e       Subject:     [platform-help-dev] Help Definition               
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                    02/14/2002 06:56 AM                                                                            
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Hi,

A bunch of questions !

What is exactly the range of Eclipse Platform Help ?

<db>
In general, it is
- the online help: contribution, displaying and searching the
documentation,
- the context-sensitive help: contribution and displaying.
Registration/triggering is handled by the UI team.
</db>

For example, if I talk about a javadoc editor, should it be dealt in jdt
news or here ?

<db>
Yes, I think that's the right place.
</db>

Can I consider that everything in the Help Perspective is related to this
area ? And every other help features are handled by their initiators (java,
HTML...) ?

<db>
That's pretty much true. By the way, the help perspective will go away in
this release, and a help view browser will be launched instead (lots of
reasons why, for example, one reason was to address modality issues)
</db>

That means the only Help format is an index pointing HTML pages ? (I am not
criticizing, just trying to make sure I understand :-)

<db>
No, any document that can be displayed in a browser would be a good
candidate. There will be issues with searching, but for navigation and
displaying help content you could have docs that are XML (you'll likely
need to style them for proper dispaly in the browser), PDF, plain text,
etc.
On Windows the browser is IE5+, on Linux it is Mozilla (0.9.2 +), etc. so
any document that can be displayed in those browser can be a help document.
It is safer, though, to stick with HTML for the time being.
</db>

Does Help provide (or will provide in the future) a kind of framework to
other plug-ins and standardize the way they are building their Help
features ? (pop-ups, hyperlink to Help perspective ...)

<db>
I am not sure I fully understand the question. I think you are talking
about an eclipse platform standard way to deal with user assistance, entry
points into help, etc.
There are people who are looking at the entire project from a usability and
UI design perspective, so I suppose the answer is yes.
</db>


Is there a plan to include a java tutorial in Eclipse ? Or java online Help
(like code snippet to show you how to code a for loop or open a socket ...)
? Should I ask this question to jdt developers ?

<db>
That could be the JDT developers,but likely some other folks on the "doc"
component.
I think all the major components are represented in the "doc" sub-project.

Regards
-Dorian

</db>

Thank you.


Thierry

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