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- Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!hri.com!ukma!hsdndev!husc-news.harvard.edu!husc9!winer
- From: winer@husc9.Harvard.EDU (Adam Winer)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
- Subject: Re: Advice on Constructing Help Subsystem
- Keywords: Help,Hypercard,Apple Events
- Message-ID: <1992Dec14.154728.18481@husc3.harvard.edu>
- Date: 14 Dec 92 20:47:26 GMT
- References: <1992Dec14.044553.26938@feline.uucp>
- Sender: winer@husc9 (Adam Winer)
- Organization: Harvard University Science Center
- Lines: 54
- Nntp-Posting-Host: husc10.harvard.edu
-
- In article <1992Dec14.044553.26938@feline.uucp>, king@feline.uucp (KingLeon) writes:
-
- |> Balloon help I find interesting, but very annoying - perhaps because
- |> it gets its message across too quickly and effectively, perhaps because
- |> all help is turned on when the user problably only wants to know about
- |> one item. Help is restricted to objects that are physically present.
-
- Try a cool shareware control panel called SpeedyFinder (v 1.5.7, I think).
- It lets you configure a group of modifier keys that, when held down,
- activate balloon help; that way, you can get help for one thing alone.
- |> I'm working on my lecture notes for a course on GUI programming. The
- |> course is a comparative study of the Mac and Windows. Currently I am
- |> One can't ask about "how do I do this" kind of questions. Windows help
- |> launches another hypertext application (WinHelp) which has a terrible
- |> authoring environment and obscures the original application window.
- |>
- |> I recall that Apple at one time was pushing Hypercard as its help
- |> environment, but that didn't seem to take place.
- |>
- |> My question is as follows: What would a preferred method of adding
- |> Help to an application:
- |> 1. Launch Hypercard then send it a parameter or command either
- |> thru an Apple Event, global memory value or a keyword that
- |> is written to a a file?
- Definitely not; that would be stunningly slow.
-
- |> 2. Stick with Balloon Help?
- |> 3. There is some other technique that I've missed?
- Somewhere (IM VI, I believe), Apple discusses what type of help they think
- programs should provide. If I remember correctly, it was multipart.
- #1: Balloon help, for very simple questions (basically, what the hell does
- this button (menu item, etc.) do?)
- #2: Online help: see a typical Microsoft product for an example of this.
- There are some freeware code packages that make implementing a
- scaled down version of this _very_ easy. I have one I highly
- suggest, called "Show Help 2.0". I got it off of Compuserve, so
- I don't know if it's ftp'able.
- #3: A tutorial, preferably online. I'm sure some programs have this, but
- I can't remember an online tutorial in any program I've ever seen.
- #4: Documentation. (Not really pertinent to your question, but certainly
- an important issue in help.
-
- So Apple doesn't really want you to stick to one small type of help.
-
- |>
- |> Option 1 appeals to me because of the authoring environment of Hypercard,
- |> but some sample code would be helpfull.
-
- Hypercard, however, is probably intractable.
-
- --
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