Help Architecture
By The Trinidad Kid , Section Dev Notes [] Posted on Tue Dec 18, 2001 at 05:00:14 PM PST
This is a sketch for a Help system architecture which is flows from my usability proposal

Sketches Of A Help System Architecture There are 2 components to this proposed Help System architecture: A structured help text The links to that help text at different points within the Scoop site First Component I suggest that the help information be kept in a table (lets call it helptext) with this format (I know it is counter intuitive to do the columns down and rows across but it formats much easier on me): _FieldName__|_____Row 1___________|_______Row 2_________ HelpID.......HelpNewUsers..........HelpSubmit........... HelpTitle....Help For New Users....Submitting Stories.... HelpContent.."This section is...".."To submit stories..." FirstOrder...2.....................2..................... SecondOrder..1.....................2..................... When this table is updated a static HTML page will be generated. (See later for issues in the page generation).The data will be read in sorted by First Order and then Second Order and a structured page will be created. The page will consist of a number of sections which will be the section for every discrete value of FirstOrder which has the lowest value of SecondOrder, looking something like this: ...starts... {A NAME="HelpNewUsers"}Help For New Users This section consists of help for new users of this www.myscoop.org who are interesting in finding out how to use the site... {A NAME="HelpSubmit"}Submitting New Stories To submit a story simply select the submit story option on the page and then fill in the three sections... {A NAME="HelpModerate"}Selecting Stories For Publication You decide which stories get published by moderating the queue of stories that have been submitted for pubication... ...ends... The {A NAME=""} will be proper HTML name tags that the help system will use to open the help document at the appropriate page. The page will be stuck in a help document. Second Component The context sensitive part will be provided by another table (lets call it helpvars) which will be another set of interpolating keys like blocks and vars. It will have a simple format: _FieldName__|_____Row 1_______|_______Row 2_____|__Row 3________ HelpID.......HelpNewUsers......HelpSubmit........HelpSubmit..... DisplayText..I'm new, help me..How do I submit?..What's this?... The helpvar HelpIDs will be many-to-one to the HelpIDs in the helptext table. These helpvars can be liberally sprinkled through the code like fairy dust using like so |helpid| - as per vars and blocks. HTML generation issue Should the HTML be interpolated with its own helpids to allow cross-referencing? "Mr Cleanness and Mr Customer Expectation, they says yes, but Mr Cut'n'Paste he says that means I have to do some work of my own..." Things That Need To Be Done When the helpID is wheeched out of the database it needs to be wrapped in a nice little {A HREF=""}{/A} overcoat. For the moment we'll use an {A HREF="" TARGET=""} tag to open in a new window, but in future we might stick an option to either open it in the same window or in a target. Dr Frankensein's Collection Of Bits The function call cycle for loading the helpvars is: Scoop:_set_ui Scoop::Interface::refresh_ui Scoop::Interface::get_helpvars (clone of get_blocks - stick the data in the cache too) The function call cycle for interpolating the helpvars is: Stick a call to keyReplace in Scoop::page_out with an argument of the new $S->{UI}->{HELPVARS} An admin page to manage entering the helpvars will be needed as well. Any comments, suggestions and/or correction of my egregious misunderstandings much appreciated before I start doing anything...

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