[squeak-dev] HelpSystem (was Documentation Team)
Torsten Bergmann
astares at gmx.de
Wed Apr 21 17:56:41 UTC 2010
To clearify a few things from my side on the discussion
on squeak-dev:
1. HelpSystem is working, if ASCII is OK for now we can use
it Pharo/Squeak - otherwise I would see it as an early preview.
I have clear goals how it should look like in the
next iterations. For this more patience is necessary.
2. HelpSystem is independent from where and how the actual
information is stored (I think I demonstrated this with
the IRC example, the books and the API help).
3. I hope to keep HelpSystem in sync for major Squeak distributions
(Squeak, Pharo, Cuis, ...)
The last additions from Hannes already broke the code
in Pharo. Seems to be a Pharo issue this time
http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/detail?id=2342
But please dont commit when it is only working in
Squeak since my development environment is Pharo.
4. Yes, the content is currently ASCII but the design is prepared
to add other types in future releases.
A HelpTopic defines an ivar "contents" - currently referring
to a string. I may add another ivar "contentType"
in the future to handle/distinguish additionaly types
(HTML, SqueaksRichText, Morphs/BookMorph, ...)
5. HelpSystem should not be limited to Squeak. It should also
serve the case that when you write and deploy a commercial
app in Squeak you may use it to provide help to your
end user/customer
6. There are two types of help I see:
A. SystemHelp: Help books/Tutorials/Manuals
B. SystemReference: API Help, class comments
HelpSystem is supporting both.
I already wrote about the differences and details in
http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-project/2010-April/024857.html
7. I would really like to see support for HTML viewing
in the image (HTMLViewMorph or so) - maybe based on Scamper
to get a better viewer (headings, tables, ...) than the
current plain text.
If people want to contribute they should start right with this
task.
I know that Laurent already made Scamper loadable in Pharo,
dont know about the state in Squeak.
There is also another HTML browser with markup and CSS now available
open source as MIT (WithStyle), I already mentioned this.
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/rowanb/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Im_back..._but_SWS_isnt&entry=3364012145
8. I know that we now have discussions on which syntax (Wiki,...)
to use for describing the contents.
My answer is: it is important but I dont care (yet) since
this discussion is useless until we have an HTML viewer (see 7.)
and even when there are different syntax styles you can provides
builders to transform them into HTML or other contentTypes
afterwards.
See the class HelpBuilder and subclasses.
9. If you want to write a book for SystemHelp (see 6.A) then
the help system provides a class "CustomHelp" similar
to TestCase in SUnit. This class is used to directly
map book structures to the class hierarchy.
The intention was to be able to create, store and manage
these books directly with the usual Smalltalk tools.
You can even restructure your book with the RefactoringBrowser.
10. If you want to write API help you (see 6.B) can contribute
right now by commenting all the undocumented classes in the
standard image.
HelpSystem just queries these informations from the usual
sources (class comments, ...). I would not change this
or make it too complicated since this is what people are
used too.
I dont see more documented classes by introducing a
special syntax (wiki or whatever) people have to learn/know about
- so lets clean up documenting the classes first.
11. HelpSystem is able to get contents from external sources
(see the IRC example) - but I would prefer that authoring/viewing
could be done right from within the image.
Even when the result is stored external afterwards.
Look at my example books: I can view and change them
right from the image and make them available to other images
using Metacello/Squeaksource.
Accessibility of docu (viewing and authoring) is the key to keep
the system and docu in sync and up to date.
External authoring mostly results in unmaintained docu (see
the Squeak Swiki).
12. I thought again if it is ready to integrate into Pharo and
Squeak. From all the discussions I would say it is too early.
13. If one wants the docu on the web the answer is easy: we
can generate static files or serve them with Seaside.
But I have no need for that right now, especially since
this is already available in various forms.
We can do many things (similar to Python, JavaDoc, you name it)
But - let's do it step by step. As I said:
- Someone working on a good HTML Viewer that I can integrate
would really help moving this forward
(based on Scamper or by porting WithStyle)
- Updating class comments would also help a lot
Bye
Torsten
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