[Zope-dev] [RfC] Removal of old stuff in Zope 2.10

[Andreas Jung]

--On 20. Dezember 2005 14:27:18 -0500 Paul Winkler <pw_lists at slinkp.com> 
wrote:
>
> just to be clear, the stuff I'm talking about is ZMI user interface
> docs, not programmer docs.

I'll raise the question again: what are the benefits of the HelpSys for a 
Zope user? I just clicked through the HelpSys (I've never used and missed 
it
throughout my Zope career) and all the unorganized information in the 
HelpSys are more or less in the same way available in the Zope Book (ZPT, 
DTML references etc.). The HelpSys presents the information just in an 
unusable and insane way...so I wonder what is the value of this crap?
Would it hurt someone when we remove it? How many percent of the ppl using 
Zope - either through the ZMI or the filesystem - actually use this 
"information source" (it's more an information sink)? My theory: a) ppl 
never read documentation b) ppl read the Zope Book because we point them to 
the Zope Book as primary Zope resource. At least the Zope Book is somewhat 
maintained. The HelpSys docs were not update in the past as far as I can 
remember. My proposal would be:

 - forget the HelpSys forever

 - let's try to (auto)-generate interfaces from the existing code as the
   primary source for API related documentation

 - additional information and story telling should be done through doc tests

 - create an _optional_ replacement for HelpSys (Apidoc-based or whatever)

-aj


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