[PD-dev] Work on "help" menu and help-patch searching spec

IOhannes m zmoelnig zmoelnig at iem.at
Mon Apr 25 14:05:18 CEST 2005


Krzysztof Czaja wrote:
> hi Ben,
> 
> B. Bogart wrote:
> ...
> 
>> * spec for the searching of help files.
>> * organization of pd "help" pull-down menu.
>> * functional catagories for PD externals/objects.
> 
> 
> great you are pushing this.  Some random thoughts and questions...
> 
> Have you considered other ways of browsing -- choosing something
> that better scales?  Not sure if hierarchical pull-down menu is
> the right way of browsing thousands of items.
> 
> How would the help files structure relate to eventual structuring
> of class names into a browsable ``object list'' (btw. such list
> should have its own "open help file" popup)?  And how would these
> relate to eventual structuring of classes themselves into
> packages, Guenter's namespaces, or anything that would finally be
> chosen?

yes, i still think that full-object-browsing will lead to 
information-overdose if we don't limit ourselves to some structuring 
mechanism, which in turn i think will be problematic (given the 
different characters of pd-developers)

> 
> The structure seems closed.  I mean, even though a keyword comment
> may contain any word that its author finds suitable, only the
> predefined words would categorize the file for browsing -- is this
> the case?  and if so, why?

i don't see, why the browser system should not be extensible to include 
the "randomly chosen" keywords an author finds suitable.

probably we should ping bryan, as he might be the one with most 
knowledge on auto-clustering words.

mfg,.as.dr
IOhannes






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