Dirk Stöcker schrieb:
> On Sun, 4 Oct 2009, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
>
>> Perhaps it would help if there was a way in JOSM to link from each
>> dialog / logical part of the UI to the associated documentation page.
>> Then you could always click "Help (for this dialog)" to get at the
>> documentation.
>
> Press <F1> above a feature and you go directly to the corresponding help
> page. If not, then in josm the spec for the help page is missing - This
> is a mainly adding a 'this.putValue("help", "...")' for the relevant
> component when missing.
>
> We have a very good design of help system, but there is nobody who cares
> for the texts. And I fear also in future nobody cares.
>
> It is natural that the help-links in JOSM will go slightly out of sync
> when the doc pages aren't maintained.
JOSM translation shows that users are taking care if the hurdle for a
first start isn't too high. Me feeling is that the help system
technically might be good, but the hurdle for users to take part in help
documentation is currently just too high (or at least it seems to be).
My ideas to improve this:
1. We need a josm-users mailing list. osm.talk (or local lists) are too
polluted, josm-dev is not the right place for non dev questions (and
"dev" probably prevents users from asking here). We currently don't have
a place for a "JOSM user community" that could handle lot's of issues
already at this place. Maybe we even need josm-users-de as there are
lot's of german only JOSM users?
2. Add meaningful tooltips for all GUI elements. This is by far the
easiest and fastest way (beside a good GUI design) for people to learn a
new GUI (at least that's true for me). While a lot of places already
have useful tooltips, especially new GUI parts often missing this -
where it would be most helpful.
3. Make <F1> more widely known. Repeat this step more often ;-)
4. Add the basic help steps yourself as a start. It's a lot easier for
both sides (devs and users) to have a minimal help page to start to work
from. If questions arise and the dev tells the user: "Please have a look
at URL xy. It's not perfect, it's a wiki, please improve it" - that's a
lot more helpful than just: "do it yourself".
I guess just a little bit development could boost the user participation.
You'll always have the "you've written a stupid program and not even
documented it" kind of people, but let's not take them as "how users
already are" ...
Regards, ULFL
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