Yes, authoring capabilities would be cool to have. But first we have to find out what the content really should be and how it should be represented (simple text, markup, active morphs, ...)
KISS and learn. Better a simple working than a complex unfinished.
Some kind of simple markup language to have for example links to other pages or books, or to execute code snippets with a single mouse click
Do you know the Squeak welcome workspace? It provided something like this - a Text could define "runs" to change style, color of text or even have clickable links with Smalltalk code behind - dont know if this is still possible in Pharo since parts of Morphic are removed. On the other hand it was Squeak only - hard to create from tyical documentation formats (text, HTML, ...)
Maybe we could reactive code from "Scamper" (the Squeak web browser) for simple HTML like text styling. Using a subset of HTML as description would also allow us to publish the help contents on webpages later.
I also remember a full webbrowser written in Smalltalk (VW). Meanwhile it is open source (MIT), see [1] ... so lets just reactivate it ;)
interesting.
We all have many ideas (like yours with the debugger) - but first I would like to see a minimal version for a help system:
- provide help contents as simple ascii text (as it is now) - ability to jump from a tool to a specific page (like F1-help on Windows) we can use a simple unique key which is defined in HelpTopic already. - ability to define order of pages together with order of (sub)books
good plan
With a minimal help tool (included in the dev-image) we can provide help to beginners and start documenting Pharo.
Yes Something that I would like is the following: a simple way to script UML like diagrams. I would like a graphical way to express design and I want no magic so here is what I want comp := UClass named: 'ProgramNode'. comp at: 10@100. comp tagged: 'Composite hiearchy'. vist := UClass named: 'ProgramNodeEnumerator'. comp at: 250@100. comp tagged: 'Visitor hiearchy'. sub := UClass named: 'MessageSendNode'. sub at: 10@200. sub extend: comp. comp talkTo: vis with: 'acceptVisitor/visit*' then we store that in the package and we with clik on it is is displayed. I should add that to DrDoc. But if somebody want to help this would be great.
As a second step we can work on better markup, authoring, active content ...
However - the repo is open for any contribution...
Now....It is not clear for me the differences between HelpSystem and ProfStef.
"HelpSystem" is like a normal help system you know from Eclipse, KDE, Windows, ... It is more a reference/documentation kind of thing.
"ProfStef" is an interactive tutorial usefull to teach things step by step.
Help system is new ?
Yes, developed yesterday.
should they be merged?
Hey, we just decoupled ... why merge again ;) Read [2]
when we should use one and when the other ?
ProfStef is for an introduction (5min course) on Pharo or tools, an interactive tutorial to introduce Smalltalk or basic concepts. It is more "workspace" oriented. See Laurents comments.
HelpSystem is more a general help system with a "browser" that should be available as a base framework so tools can provide help texts/contents to users.
Bye T.
[1] http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/rowanb/blogView?showComments=true&p...
[2] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-project/2010-February/021782.ht...
-- Sicherer, schneller und einfacher. Die aktuellen Internet-Browser - jetzt kostenlos herunterladen! http://portal.gmx.net/de/go/chbrowser
_______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project