| Re: 8.0 Developer Documentation [message #71963 is a reply to message #71929] |
Mon, 02 August 2010 11:10   |
Haje Korth
Messages: 651
Registered: May 1997
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Senior Member |
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Doug,
EDG and Analyst are the most pressing ones, but I really want all PDFs
in the help documentation.
A good help system is extremely important for usability, especially
for new users. I have other software packages I avoid as much as I can
because I cannot find commands in a timely manner...
H
On Aug 2, 12:46 pm, Paulo Penteado <pp.pente...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 2, 12:42 pm, Doug Edmundson <do...@ittvis.com> wrote:
>
>> I've forwarded your idea on to the docs group. I talked to them last
>> week about the issue and I think they'd like to know which PDFs people
>> are using most. Are folks still heavy into iTools, dataminer, the EDG,
>> etc.? That info will help them gauge priorities.
>
>> The 7.1 help system should work on its own, sans workbench. It should
>> be in .../itt/IDL71/idlde/. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your question.
>
>> I don't know if this'll help much, but note that on Mac one can open
>> multiple PDFs at the same time in Preview, as if they're all a chapter
>> in one big book. That might make searching a bit easier. Links should
>> work for the most part. I just tried Adobe Reader on Windows and am
>> feeling a bit of pain... ;-)
>
> It is very inconvenient to have to look for the pdfs, particularly
> lacking their content showing on searches of the help system. As I
> remember, through all the recent versions of the help system, it was
> always possible to search everywhere from a single place. Now, one
> needs to know that besides the help, there are those separate pdfs to
> look into. Besides the inconvenience (I am probably going to use
> Acrobat to join them into a single file, so that they become a bit
> easier to use), it is not obvious that these separate files exist - I
> only found out from this thread, and I was already missing some of the
> content I knew was present in previous versions. So many users might
> not find what they need just because it does not show up in the help
> system.
>
> At least there should be a way to launch the pdf reader on those pdfs
> directly from the Workbench or the help system, so that it is visible
> that they exist - if there is one already, it is not visible enough.
>
> Of those pdfs, I particularly use most often the parts about the
> internal API, the iTool classes, and the IMSL routines.
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