TIP OF THE DAY -- Help Screens

[Bill Vermillion]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 11:14:25AM -0500, Tom Pancero thus spoke:

> I have long been dismayed with the 'Help' screens available
> with Filepro. It appears to me that the contents of the Help
> screens were written by someone who is very well versed in
> Filepro and seems to make certain assumptions about the level
> of understanding the reader has.

> I rarely use the Help screens for anything other than checking
> on the syntax of a command. This seems to me to be a waste of a
> valuable reference tool.

> I have long believed that any instruction sheets, or help
> files, should be EDITED by someone who has very little
> connection to the 'Black Room Code Cutters'.

> An item for the 'Wish List' .......

> How about a committee (arg!) to review/modify the Help files
> where they could tweak the format and content of the files.
> With a resource like the Filepro List I am sure the product of
> their (the committee) efforts would be significant.

> End_of_rant

That being said I would create help files for the end user, so that
if they had questions in any field they could get help for the
data.

I'd also put prompts at the bottom of the screen for no-intutitive 
data wants - eg for year in school it would pop up the only
acceptable values at the bottom of the screen.

I never thought the native help screens for development were that
good - as the printed manuals [from those days] were quite good,
but I found being able to put in help for any/all fields for users
was quite good.  I haven't seen a lot of other FP sites, but that
feature seems to be underutilized.  Maybe beause it's that
programmers like to program and not write documentation.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com