Am Die, 2003-08-19 um 15.08 schrieb Raphaël Quinet:

> Now I am confused.  I thought that we were talking about the online help
> system, not about the manual (GUM).  It looks like you consider both of
> them to be the same thing.  Is that right?

The old gimp-help was build upon the content of the GUM. And yes, I
think it still makes sense to derive the onlinehelp from manual (but not
the other way round).

> I thought that the online help would be something that is focused on
> explaining individual functions, i.e. one page for each feature.  If I
> understood you correctly, you would like to merge these functional
> descriptions with something that is more like a tutorial.

Exactly, I think online help is only worth it when it helps people. That
means it should provide information about the topic at hand, it's
meaning, a short description how it works, the available parameters and
at least a link to some tutorial.

Typically some builtin help is more like a rephrasing of what a
non-blind person can see in the user interface. I don't think this is
helpful at all; I think the person desperately trying to retrieve some
useful information which cannot be found is more annoyed by the loss of
time than the missing help. At least I made that experience some years
ago with quite prominent MS software.

> For the "online help" part (the part that is called directly by the GIMP
> when the user invokes the context help), I do not see any need to allow
> anything else than a one-to-one mapping between the English version and
> the translations.

Yes, for this it may not be necessary technically, but why restrict
oneself when more is possible without additional efforts... :)

> I think that too many people are confused now.  Daniel, it would be nice
> if you start a new thread with a message explaining what are the plans
> for the new help system.  I would like to know what are the goals,
> non-goals and the proposed implementation.  Note that these goals do not
> necessarily have to be discussed: it would be fine for me if you said:
> "I am going to do it like that or not at all."  But at least these ideas
> should be summarized in a clear way, to avoid future confusion about the
> plans for the help system.

Caught me here. I fear I still haven't provided enough information so
I'd probably be better off investing some time into some updated
paperwork which I can refer to. I'm a bit busy though so please don't
hold your breath....

-- 
Servus,
       Daniel

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