[Echempp-devel] help system

[<ber...@t-...>]

Hi,
I have some additional suggestion regarding the help system of EChem++.
In the moment, if we use help->contents (I start from model in this 
case), we go directly to the EChem++ html documentation, which starts 
with some explanatory text.
However, users may want to look for quite different types of information 
when using a help button. Three items come to my mind:
(1) an explanation of background ideas (this is what we provide directly 
in the moment)
(2) technical details (which now can be accessed throught eh doxygen 
created buttons at the top of the html pages),
but also
(3) some explanation of the window, they are working in.
The latter we do not provide at all in the moment, indeed this is 
probably what a new user really wants to have first. Say, `now I am here 
in this window, and there are these three control buttons, what do they 
do???' For example, the control buttons in the left hand side column of 
the model main window are not immediately clear to me.
How could we support this? In the windows which we reach from the main 
window buttons, we have a help button, where we can place such 
information (it could again be html code, as we use for the other 
documentation, but we should decide where we put the text in our source 
tree). But how about the main window itself? Should we have a separate 
heading  in the Help menu, except Contents, Index etc.? Say, Context 
Help, or something like this?

Bernd
-- 
=======================================================================
Bernd Speiser
Institut f"ur Organische Chemie
Auf der Morgenstelle 18
D-72076 T"ubingen
Germany
phone: +49-7071-2976205 (office) +49-7071-2976242 (laboratory)
fax:   +49-7071-295518
e-mail: ber...@un...
Internet: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/speiser
=======================================================================