[PD-dev] how to have the same help file for different abstractions?

[IOhannes m zmölnig]

On 7/13/23 15:45, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
> Hi, when compiling objects we can use "add creator" or "set help file" so
> you can have the same help file for a group of objects or
> creating aliased/abbreviated versions of an object. There's no way to do
> this with abstractions though.
> 
> I also know there's no way to do something like this right now and that
> we'd need some new object or external - maybe something in the realm of
> iemguts, like a nem 'canvassethelp' object.

personally i think that the "set help file" functionality of the core 
should be deprecated, and instead force a one-object-to-one-helpfile 
mapping.
help-files could share a common abstraction to document similarities.

this is mainly driven by my desire to turn help-files into an easily 
machine-parseable description of an object. this could then be used for 
things like autocompletion, object browsers and deken search lists.

IIRC, the "set help file" functionality is really meant to assign 
help-files for objects that have names that are not easily representable 
on filesystems (e.g. using characters like '*', '/',...); also it was 
introduced in the dark ages when there was some confusion about the 
filename pattern for help files.


as for the "add creator": while i do not have a use-case for this right 
now, i agree that iemguts would be a good place for such an object:
 > [objectalias bigfriendlyobject bfo].

there are practicaly caveats to this though.



gamrds
IOhannes
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