Why Two sets of Documentation?

[David T.]

--- On Thu, 6/3/10, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> From: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Why Two sets of Documentation?
> To: "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Josh Sled" <jsled at asynchronous.org>, gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> Date: Thursday, June 3, 2010, 12:52 PM
> David,
> 
> "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
> writes:
> 
> > Derek--
> >
> > That sounds like a nice idea. But I re-state that
> having the context
> > help packaged separately from the application is a
> little wacky to
> > me--and if you create links from context help into the
> concepts guide,
> > the same point would apply to the Concepts guide (just
> one layer
> > removed).
> 
> Oh, I agree!  I think the context-sensitive help
> should be part of
> GnuCash itself.  However how LARGE is the
> context-sensitive help?  How
> much would it bloat the application to include it?
> 
> > Is there some way to incorporate the context help
> directly into the
> > main Gnucash application, so that users would at least
> get that
> > just-the-facts kind of help from the get-go?
> 
> Define "directly into the main application".  If you
> mean, could we move
> the files out of gnucash-docs and into gnucash and then
> distribute them
> in the gnucash tarball, then yes, that's possible (within
> reason, based
> on the size considerations).  However if you mean
> including the docs in
> the C source code itself, then no, that's not at all
> reasonable.

I meant the former (context help out of -docs and into the base app). I am not sure what constitutes reasonable, but when I download the help manual from http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/help/help.html, the result is about 1MB in size. I haven't checked whether this is an accurate or complete download; it was just a quick pull from svn using httrack.

What would it take to get this moving along, and how might I help with it? If it's a matter of parsing the help file into a particular format and adding appropriate codes into that data to allow someone to hook in, I might be able to swing that...

David

> 
> > David
> 
> -derek
> 
> > --- On Wed, 6/2/10, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
> wrote:
> >
> >> From: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
> >> Subject: Re: Why Two sets of Documentation?
> >> To: "Josh Sled" <jsled at asynchronous.org>
> >> Cc: "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>,
> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> >> Date: Wednesday, June 2, 2010, 7:38 AM
> >> Josh Sled <jsled at asynchronous.org>
> >> writes:
> >> 
> >> > "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
> >> writes:
> >> >> From my (limited) perspective, I see very
> little
> >> substantive difference between the two sets. Most
> times, the
> >> Tutorial guide has better information to my way of
> looking
> >> at it. 
> >> >
> >> > There is no good reason for two documents. 
> They
> >> should be combined,
> >> > focused on concepts rather than a recitation
> of the
> >> toolbar buttons and
> >> > menu items.
> >> 
> >> Well, I think it's useful to have
> context-sensitive help
> >> where you can
> >> ask for help based on the page you're viewing and
> get docs
> >> on what the
> >> various menu items do.
> >> 
> >> Is it possible to create a context-sensitive
> >> what-each-menu-option-does
> >> set of links into the concepts guide?
> >> 
> >> -derek
> >> -- 
> >>        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT
> >> EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
> >>        Member, MIT Student
> >> Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
> >>        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/   
> >> PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
> >>        warlord at MIT.EDU 
> >>                
> >>       PGP key available
> >> 
> >
> >
> >       
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
>        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT
> EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>        Member, MIT Student
> Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/   
> PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>        warlord at MIT.EDU 
>                
>       PGP key available
>