On Mon, Mar 19, 2007 at 11:14:34AM -0400, Ted Zlatanov wrote: > On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 10:30:48 +0100 csant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> I think this kind of help should actually live in the scratchpad, it's > >> exactly the right pop-up model. > > c> Just make sure that the user first discovers how to pop up the > c> scratchpad - and how to pop it away again :) (FWIW, IMHO some > c> minibuffer would be a better location) > > So you and Tuomo noted that the user sees the status bar, but doesn't > see the scratch pad by default. Thus, the status bar should say > "Press MOD+F1 (MOD is 'Alt' on most keyboards) to see the pop-up help" > and the scratchpad should come up on that keypress, showing the > manual. That's how I would set things up.
I'd rather not interfere with the standard keybindings here: scratchpad pops up with mod1+space. as I said already, I think the best way to pop up the tutorial would be mod1+F1 which currently is bound to ion3 manpage (as is F1<RET>, which suffices for getting to the manpage). I really don't see a point in popping up the help in the scratchpad frame: it's by default and for good reason a rather small frame in the middle of the screen. that's exactly what one wants here most of the time: a small window where one can issue `make' or whatever). if you display a longer document here, one _always_ would need to maximize the scratchpad first (if one knows how to do it...). I find the current approach taken with the manpages via F1 much more sensible: use whichever frame you happen to be in. same should happen with the tutorial when issuing mod1+F1. usually this will than display in a large frame allowing to read the document in a sensible way. question: what are the ideas for achieving formatting? should this be written as a troff manpage like the real manpage (might be OK)? or what else? I'd definitely advocate to use something which allows to get sensible formatted output to the terminal (just as `man'). if people are comfortable with it, I'd propose 'troff/ms' wich would allow better control over formatting. (a bit of advertising for this dinosaur: it's always there, just as `troff/man', it's definitely not more complicated than the `troff/man' macros and it would allow easy integration of nicely formatted tables via the `tbl' preprocessor' even for terminal output -- might be helpful for the keybinding lists... and maybe(...) I could at least take over formatting if you feel uncomfortable with it). in eithcer case `man' and `ms' would allow to format into pdf, html, too. yes. TeX would be working too (but not for sensible terminal output), but talking of bloatware... and please, please: not texinfo... I think the best thing is to have (as far as possible) nicely formatted output in a terminal which is piped through `less' for navigation/searching. and finally: I would'nt like to have a permanent 'help' entry in the statusbar. I feel it should go in the F12 menu (together with `about', 'help'. here I would argue to occupy the `help' entry with the new stuff and change the current 'help' to 'manpages' or 'man' because that's what it is). the user must somehow have learned initially of the F12 menu otherwise he/she won't get out of ion3 at all. another hint to the tutorial should go in the manpage (SEE ALSO), which one can expect that every users has had a look at . joerg
