Ease maintenance of build-in help

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Regina,

Regina Henschel píše v Ne 02. 08. 2015 v 19:06 +0200:

> I have started a new thread so that the problem is not hidden inside 
> other threads or in private mails.
> 
> First, is there consensus, that the current build-in help will be retained?

Thank you for your thoughts on this topic - and sorry for my late reply.
In the ideal world, I'd like the help be handled like this:

* wikihelp is the authoritative source, with appropriate approval system
  etc. [easy for casual contributors to fix stuff in the help, but safe
  & easy to keep the standards]

* existing translations converted so that there is no additional work
  for the translators when converting to wikihelp (once)

* built-in help is generated from the wikihelp + translatios, and shown
  in the browser (JavaScript used for the indexing & search), instead of
  the home-grown help system

Currently we have the following pieces of the puzzle:

* ability to convert .xhp's -> wiki format
* ability to convert wiki format -> html

The indexing IIRC is not retained at the moment, and also the JavaScript
indexing is not implemented; so the switch is impossible in the current
state.  I am unable to work on this, but would be extremely happy to
mentor anybody who would be willing to help.

For the wikihelp itself, it might be possible to use the Mozilla's
Kitsune (the engine behind support.mozilla.org):

https://github.com/mozilla/kitsune

but that needs checking - whether it is better for our purposes than the
'normal' mediawiki or not.

> If not, then the following ideas are useless and starting would be waste 
> of time. In such case, please stop me immediately.

As you can see - the "ideal world" vision is long-term :-)  So let's not
allow perfect be enemy of the good, and improve the current workflow in
the meantime.

> I collect here some ideas from some threads and mails:
> 
> A
> Authors of help texts are allowed to start in ODF to discuss and 
> finalize the content and appearance of the intended help texts. There 
> should be a place in the repository to store such files. This way 
> authors did not need deep knowledge of the technical structure of 
> helpcontent2. The person who integrates the help texts into the build-in 
> help need not be the content author.

That's perfectly possible.  Let's just use Flat ODF (.fodt) as the
fileformat, and store the file next to the appropriate .xhp in the help
repository.

It would be still good to use the helpauthoring.oxt when generating the
odt too, to use the appropriate fields, and to use the same template as
the start.

> B
> Improve the extension "HelpAuthoring" and fix its bugs. The extension 
> might be principally not suitable to generate the final version of a 
> help file, but it is useful as start, because it sets a lot of the 
> needed XML-elements and attributes automatically. The result might still 
> needs additions and corrections, but that is less work, than writing all 
> from scratch. Even if someone do not know all details about the help, he 
> can start and deliver a file, which other then can improve and integrate.

Definitely.  The xslt filter that is responsible for converting fodt <->
xhp is actually trivial, I'm happy to fix bugs there when you send me
the original .(f)odt, resulting .xhp (generated by the 'broken'
helpauthoring.oxt), and the fixed .xhp (that is modified how it is
supposed to look like).

> C
> Provide a development section about the build-in help to the Wiki. It 
> should not only contain a tutorial about help authoring but in addition 
> a description how the current help works at all from a developer view, 
> and how it is actually structured.

I attempted that here:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Help

I'd like this page to become a kind of "do this and that, and you'll
have a minimal useful help for your new feature" for the developers -
ie. assuming that the person knows git etc.  Improvements most
appreciated!

> We can start with the document "OOo2HelpAuthoring.pdf". The content has 
> to be revised and adapted and extended. For example the .mk files are 
> different than described in that document and the document describes the 
> possibilities of the help format, but not all details of the actual 
> realization.

There is also a more verbose

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/HelpContent

that I think could be this "stripped down OOo2HelpAuthoring.pdf".  We
should probably move it to Documentation/HelpContent so that it is in
the right section of the wiki (?)

> Having it in the Wiki keeps such knowledge available, when a help expert 
> leaves the community. It can be adapted to future developments. Experts 
> of different areas can better work together to collect help knowledge in 
> one place, for example experts for "Help to Wiki" and experts for 
> "translating help".
> 
> D
> It would ease work, when there would be a tool, that shows a .xhp file 
> the same way as it it shown in the help viewer, so that it is not needed 
> to build helpcontent2 every time when you test some changes in your way 
> to the final version. And authors who use "HelpAuthoring" need not be 
> able to build LibreOffice.

We have the xhp -> wiki -> html at least ;-)  So showing in the browser
would be possible, and could help fine-tuning the long term goal of
wikihelp; but probably it's not exactly what you had in mind...

All the best,
Kendy