[Sugar-devel] RFC:Simple Help widget for activities

Gonzalo Odiard gonzalo at laptop.org
Wed Mar 7 07:37:49 EST 2012


We receive many times request about adding help in the activities,
and if is true Sugar propose a exploratory approach,
not all the people learn in the same way,
and there are people who prefer a little guidance.

For the development we need a simple api, and easy i18n,
and a non obtrusive experience for the user.

Inspired by the DescriptionItem, I was experimenting with a widget to add
simple help to activities.
This is not:
* A manual
* Lessons
* Tips
Is a short startup help for the activity.

Use only text and the icons already used by the activity.

A example can be seen here:
http://dev.laptop.org/~gonzalo/images/simple_graph_help.png

In the activity we only need do:

    helpitem = HelpButton()
    toolbar.insert(helpitem, -1)
    helpitem.show()
    helpitem.add_section(_('Basic usage'))
    helpitem.add_paragraph(_('First you need add data to create the
graphic'))
    helpitem.add_paragraph(_('You can add data with this button'),
            'row-insert')
    helpitem.add_paragraph(_('...or remove data with this button'),
            'row-remove')
    helpitem.add_paragraph(_('To change the graphic title, just change the
activity title'))
....

This proposal is late for sugar 0.96, but may be we can try it in one or
two activities,
and start thinking about this topic.
I really like the help in the Implode activity, but have the following
problems:
* I don't know if apply to other type of activities.
* Is modal
* need a lot of code to implement it.

Comments?

Gonzalo
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