Re: Help Program
Al Getz wrote:
>
>
>isaac-topica at blueapples.org wrote:
>
>>
>>Hey all,
>>
>>Is it just me or is the help10 program found on the archives really
>>strange and
>>not all that useful? I'd really like to be able to make some changes to
>>it (such
>>as display the Syntax, Description, and Example pieces all on one
>>display with
>>headering, and the See Also hyperlinks or items in a drop down).
>>
>>I was thinking about writing my own viewer for the data file format (it
>>looks
>>more or less straight forward), but found that I felt like I was wasting
>>my time.
>>
>>Also, it seems sort of odd that the help file format isn't an EDS
>>database or
>>something along those lines. What was the reasoning behind that?
>>
>>I *really* like the idea of an alternative help format, but as is, this
>>won't
>>cut it.
>>
>>~ Isaac
>>
>
>Hello Isaac,
>
>Sorry the help program doesnt meet with your demands 
>
I didn't mean to come off demanding, sorry.
>
>This was a first attempt at creating an alternate help
>system that would be easy to create help data files for
>that anyone could do without resorting to a compiler.
>
>As you noted, the data format is very simple,
>so i dont see where the problem with that is.
>I didnt see any reason for using a special database
>format for this information, but perhaps you are correct
>in that if the information grows sufficiently, the
>startup is going to eat up a lot of memory when only
>one or two things can be displayed at one time.
>Perhaps this requires a re-think, but the data
>format itself seems pretty nice because it's
>in a form that the Euphoria language can read very fast
>
>
>The program was written around a very old version of
>WinLib that i modified the heck out of to get added
>functionality (such as drag and drop without ole).
>
Nice.
>
>The update that i prepared includes syntax for Euphoria
>version 2.4, but each description is all on one page like
>you were talking about. This turns out to be better.
>
Hmm. What I was thinking is that each part of the description: syntax, see also,
etc, would still be in their own nodes, but that they would be shown as one
node. Perhaps this would require adding a field to the node heading:
{ID, Title, Parent, Type}
Where Type is a flag that tells us if the node is a normal topic or a sub topic.
If a sub topic, then the contents would of the node would be appended to the
parent node's contents after the title of the sub topic is displayed in a
header. Example:
{1, "SomeFunction()", 0, t}
I'm not sure what would go here.
<
{2, "Syntax", 1, s}
i1 = SomeFunction( s1, s2, i2 )
<
{3, "Description", 1, s}
This function combines the two strings after reversing s2. It then parses any
environment variables in the resulting string. It calculates the length of that
parsed string divided by pi (roughly 3.14159), and raises to the power of i2.
<
{4, "Return Value", 1, s}
The result of the above expression.
<
{5, "See Also", 1, s}
pi(), sqrt()
<
Would be make the topic "SomeFunction()" something like:
SomeFunction()
I'm not sure what would go here.
Syntax
i1 = SomeFunction( s1, s2, i2 )
Description
This function combines the two strings after reversing s2. It then parses any
environment variables in the resulting string. It calculates the length of that
parsed string divided by pi (roughly 3.14159), and raises to the power of i2.
Return Value
The result of the above expression.
See Also
pi(), sqrt()
>
>Someone else was also talking about adding hyperlinks,
>which i gave a little thought to but i didnt get back to
>that program yet to do anything else with it.
>
I think that would be good. I think it'd be best if the viewer parsed for
hyperlinks itself, sort of like a wiki.
>
>The next version after that i was intending to use the
>Rich Edit class to display the text rather then the simple
>multiline edit control. This was going to come about
>after a few more updates of the WinClass library.
>The sad part is, this will require an almost complete re-write
>of the help program.
>
Really? That seems sort of odd, I thought they behaved in more or less the same
fashion. Perhaps this isn't the case in WinClass. But, at any rate, I'd advice
against storing the RTF code directly in the help file for two reasons:
* Stylesheets are cool, and make things very easy for web developers. I'd
recomend taking a page from that book and doing something similar, but much
simpiler of course.
* It would make the source of the help file unreadable, defeating the point
of it being easy to use.
But you probably thought of those already. I just wanted to say something about
it.
>I guess it's not really that big
>of a program anyway though.
>
>I dont see why you thought the data file format was a
>waste of time, as you can read that format very quickly
>with Euphoria simply by reading one sequence in and then
>reading the text up to the ending character.
>
I actually was trying to parse it in PHP. (For shame, I know.) I haven't tried a
Euphoria reader yet.
>
>The only change i see here would be to read the info
>in dynamically, as the user selects items in the treeview.
>
Probably. Help documents for languages get really big, more so if you want to
include other forms of documentation, such as articles, examples, etc.
>
>Also, that file contains help on the entire Euphoria
>language (v2.3) as well as some additional information.
>
>The new versions of WinLib came out after writing that
>help system, so that help section wont be up to date.
>
It seemed to me just to be a list of the WinLib functions. I'd be nice if it
also had a description of the functions.
>
>It would be nice if the viewer accepted 'snap in'
>data files, which would allow separate files to be
>included as part of the whole help system. After all,
>it's only a matter of reading the darn things in at
>the right time
>
Yeah, that's cool. Just drop a file in a folder and it's contents are added to
the list the next time the viewer is started, or you ask it to refresh itself.
>
>Any more ideas/suggestions? I'd be happy to hear them.
>
Sorry if I'm sounding pushy or something. I think you're going in the right
direction already.
>
>
>Take care for now,
>Al
>
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