nu.kanga.list.mud-dev

6313: [MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar

On Fri, 01 May 1998 00:12:20 -0400 
Caliban Tiresias Darklock<caliban@darklock.com> wrote:

> On 12:12 PM 4/30/98 -0500, I personally witnessed Dr. Cat jumping up
> to say:

>> learning is an ongoing, dynamic process, and the help a users
>> wants/needs in their first hour of using your product is very
>> different from what they need in their second day, which is
>> different from what they need after three months.  But pressing F1
>> for help in any Windows app is likely to pop up the exact SAME help
>> menu with the same sub-menus and documents every time, forever.

> Ouch... you know, I've noticed this and been frustrated by it more
> times than I can count, and it never ONCE occurred to me to seek
> some sort of reasonable solution? I think I just learned the meaning
> of "At that moment, he was enlightened." ;)

A technique I learned and copied from a good friend at IBM Advantis is
to have resource tags exported for __every__ GUI control, and then
have a small external tool, called from the makefile, which checks to
ensure that every single resource tag maps to a unique section of the
help files.

Very usability enhancing.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw@null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder@ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw@under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...

--
MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.