Andreas wrote:
>What I'm looking for is a mechanism by which the documentation can 
>remain in the image even when HelpSystem is absent

Why? Do you have test cases subclasses in the image when SUnit
is absent? No.

I think you want to have support or UI stuff removed/separated
(like the viewer) - but a basic model should remain.
The costs for the basic help system model support is minimal. 

Similar to SUnit. If you have the core model (TestCase) you 
are able to load/process tests done in subclasses. 
But with a separated UI you have the freedom for an exchangable 
TestRunner. 

Same should apply here.

>What I'm looking for is a mechanism by which the documentation can 
>remain in the image even when HelpSystem is absent. So when HelpSystem 
>is loaded it needs to discover available books. Is there some tag/marker 
>mechanism by which one can flag those pre-existing books?
>
>(*hand waiving*)

Maybe we should return to a pragma based solution. I originally
had something like this. Just load "HelpSystem-Core-tbn.4" and have a look
at class HelpHowTo methods. They have a "help" pragram.

The pragma processing mechanism is in HelpBuilder>>createBookFrom:

Danny removed this to introduce a HelpContent class (to support
different content) - which I merged into HelpPage later. 

>That's why I was saying, why not derive 
>help books from class comments? 

How? Would you create a class for each page and use their
class comment for the contents?

>the only thing I'm asking for is just a tiny bit of additional structure >in a class comment so that one can have sections etc.

As I said - maybe we should reactivate some Scamper code and use a markup
 language. The Parser from "Network-HTML" package on SqS.com/Scamper
seems to work. Although it still uses _ instead of :=.
We "just" have to rebuld a clean viewer.

>We could start with simple Wiki syntax which can be used in 
>class comments and other simple places. If people feel unsatisfied or 
>need more or want to use HelpSystem for other purposes, extend it as 
>desired.

We already discussed this and decided to first start with plain text 
and later add different content types (markup, active bookmorphs, ...)
after getting the tool integration and other capabilities done.
(I already pointed to the original discussion on pharo-dev)

Bye
T.












    
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