Re: Ease maintenance of build-in help

Hi Thorsten,

Thorsten Behrens schrieb:
> Regina Henschel wrote:
> > I have started a new thread so that the problem is not hidden inside other
> > threads or in private mails.
> Thanks a lot!
>
> > First, is there consensus, that the current build-in help will be retained?
> I think - the plan to go all-in for wiki-based help is on hold, until
> someone (Kendy?) has cycles to push it further.
>
> Would perhaps be good to extend
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Wikihelp with some
> status/plans/more details on what is missing where.

Mmh. Ideally that would mean, that the ideas below are obsolete. But it 
seems to me, that the help is in a bad state currently: The Wikihelp is 
not yet authoritative and cannot be edited and has not all needed 
features, and the built-in help is difficult to maintain and is not 
adapted to get content from the Wikihelp and still needs to provide 
those features, that the Wikihelp lacks, especially the extended tips.

I have added some comments to the linked page.

> > A
> > Authors of help texts are allowed to start in ODF to discuss and finalize
> > the content and appearance of the intended help texts. There should be a
> > place in the repository to store such files. This way authors did not need
> > deep knowledge of the technical structure of helpcontent2. The person who
> > integrates the help texts into the build-in help need not be the content
> > author.
> Makes sense. For storing those WIP versions in the repo, I'm not sure
> that gives us much. Perhaps collaboration via owncloud or wiki works
> better there?

Yes, it would have to be discussed, where such documents to store. The 
central point is, to allow a format, that is well known; so that authors 
need not learn any other authoring tool.

> > B
> > Improve the extension "HelpAuthoring" and fix its bugs. The extension might
> > be principally not suitable to generate the final version of a help file,
> > but it is useful as start, because it sets a lot of the needed XML-elements
> > and attributes automatically. The result might still needs additions and
> > corrections, but that is less work, than writing all from scratch. Even if
> > someone do not know all details about the help, he can start and deliver a
> > file, which other then can improve and integrate.
> Having a list of EasyHacks / Bugs somewhere would be a great
> start. And a possible topic for one of the upcoming hackfests.

[..}

> Sounds like another obvious Easy/HardHack idea for a Hackfest? ;)

Yes I agree, "Help Authoring" is a good topic for a Hackfest.

Kind regards
Regina