[mythtv] Re: New project ideas/proposals - documentation tools

[Ramzy Darwish]

Hello All,
Thanks for the feedback on my ideas.

I will start with the user guide and post a draft on my website (and a
message here and in mythtv-users) when I am done.

I agree with the suggestions about adding a help function to every
tool. I do know C/C++ enough that I would be able to add this feature,
but I feel that this would entail mucking around with lots of
different 'modules' and I don't want to break more than I improve just
yet :)

I think I will start with adding the feature to mythweb as a
single/isolated feature, then, after I have utilities in place to
gather/present this data (the search results), I will one-by-one look
into adding it to the different modules.

But, let me ask this:
Do you think that pressing/selecting help should bring you to an
online tool that you could search through at that point, or should it
be context-sensitive to the page you are on?

Like currently, if I am looking at the recorded programs page, and I
want to know what the little heart symbol means for a recording and I
press F1, it brings up a little dialog that tells me what all of the
symbols mean, but that's it. Do you think the help should work like
this? Or bring you to a MythHelp ~module~ that should come up with
context-sensitive help (i.e. it starts at the page you are looking
at), but has the ability to go look for other stuff, like (*gasp*) MS
HTML Help or a proper online user's guide?

And then of course, if you exit that tool, you would go right back to
where you were.

This is just for brainstorming for the time being, but I would love
any suggestions.

Thanks,
ramzy