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

Paul Winkler pw_lists at slinkp.com
Tue Dec 20 15:09:56 EST 2005


On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 08:47:34PM +0100, Andreas Jung wrote:
> 
> 
> --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 big difference is that in many places in the ZMI, clicking "help"
takes you to instructions *for the management page you are actually
looking at*.  Just because you and I have internalized all this
information long ago does not mean it isn't useful to new users.
I haven't looked at any of it recently because I don't need to
anymore.  But I remember when I *did* need to.

The users affected most by this change are not going to be on zope-dev.

Maybe I was a rare case and nobody else ever reads the help pages.
I don't think we will find out by arguing about it here.

Maybe a straw poll on the main zope list would teach us something?
Something like "Did you, at some point while learning Zope,
get anything useful from the help system?".

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

For general "what is this / what does it do / how does it work"
docs, I like that idea.
But it doesn't help with filling out forms in the ZMI.
Arguably, forms should be self-documenting, but the nice thing
about a "help" link is that it doesn't distract you when
you don't need it any more.

-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com


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