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Help File

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 11:59 am
by gwport
Dear Lauri,

I am reading the English Help File.

The more features GoWrite gets, the fewer of them are mentioned in the help file. Thus most users would not even notice their availiability. This surely is not exactly how it should be. Features should be for every user.

In particular, in the help file I read that left and right mouse buttons have the same function. They do have different functions. E.g., right clicking or right drawing selects intersections. Combined with CTRL, further selected intersections are added. - The mighty Insert | Label / CRTL L is not described for its multiple selected intersections functionality yet.

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 7:03 pm
by lpaatero
Very few users actually look at help, no matter what how good its is. It seems that users are much more likely to seek help (both information and active support) from forums or web pages.

Main problem in documentation is how to make it easy to find relatively basic information.

So currently I am planning to reduce content in help files to information users are most likely to seek from there:
  • Dialog specific help (opened by HELP button in many places).
    How to use mouse
    Content of main screen.
Then web pages should contain all task-oriented information:
  • How to do publication
    How to make something non-obvious
    ...
As you have noted, there are many options that have quite limited documentation, mostly just mentioning in dialog's help. These options are such that I don't believe many people will ever need them. So documenting them extensively is a lot of work and very little gain.

I will do clean-up round in help (and in forum) sometime when 2.2 is somewhat stabilized, so that I can add first version of information on 2.2 at the same time.

regards
Lauri