Technical Infos about bundled help

[Regina Henschel <rb...@t-online.de>]

Hi RGB ES, hi all,

this is an answer to your request in the thread "Organizing future 
discussions" to start a new thread on this topic.

I like your term "bundled help". The old term "online help" was good in 
ancient times, when printed books were shipped with StarOffice, but can 
nowadays be confused with the Wiki.

I have already worked on the help files, but stopped, because other 
things are currently more important for me.

But some hints:
(1)
The syntax of the help files is described in
http://documentation.openoffice.org/online_help/OOo2HelpAuthoring.pdf


(2)
The structure of the Helpcontent2 is described in
http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Helpcontent2

(3)
To always see the extended help tips in the UI, you need to enable it in 
Tools  > Options, or to easily toggle it add the command "Extended Tips" 
from the Category "Application" to a toolbar.

(4)
To see the command, which is associated to an UI element enable the 
environment variable HELP_DEBUG
http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Environment_Variables

(5)
To see the structure and the id's in the help viewer, some modifications 
are necessary. The description and needed files are in issue 
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=56321

(6)
Search in the mail archive. If I remember correctly, there are already 
threads, where Uwe Fischer explained some parts.

==================
For AOO 4.0 this comes into my mind, what has to be done:
(A)
Help on the new functions (e.g. SUMIFS) in Calc is missing. (I wrote 
already a mail some time ago.)
(B)
Review the text about regular expressions. Because the engine was 
changed some commands do not work in the described way.
(C)
All the new UI Elements, which will come in with the task pane, need an 
extended tip.
===================

The bundled help is in a mixed state. It had been planed to divide the 
UI-help texts from guides, so that a search does not get those mini text 
parts as result. So there exist already a lot of guides (noticeable on 
the file names) but most of the help is still in the old structure.

It has been planned to add links to the Wiki and provide extended 
information on a topic in the Wiki. Such links exist already for the 
Calc functions, where the Wiki has a reference for the functions. This 
way is reasonable, because the Wiki has better ability to show pictures 
and can provide longer, more detailed texts.

Kind regards
Regina