Context sensitive mallard topic display

[Kyle Nitzsche]

Hi from UDS,

The question was raised in one of Jim's UDS sessions today whether context 
sensitive help is appropriate and possible. There was general agreement that it 
is appropriate in the abstract, and Jim mentioned that Shaun may be working on 
something along these lines.

I just prototyped a simple python gtk demo that has a couple help buttons. When 
you click one, it launches yelp to display a specific mallard topic (from 
tomboy). When you click the other, it launches a different topic from empathy.

Two files attached,  a python file and a glade file. Just save them to some 
directory and run './context-yelp'. Then click the buttons.

I think this shows it is quite doable. It would be easy to add a help button to 
any bit of a GUI that would display the related mallard topic when clicked.

Note that yelp is launched as a separate process, so you can:
  * click the "?" button to display the help topic
  * close the app (and the help topic continues to display)

Something along these lines would probably be quite beneficial to users. Imagine 
a tricky dialog with lots of options or that is confusing. Someday developers 
and designers will make it so clean and clear that no help will be necessary. 
But imagine for now, it confuses people. Add a help button that launches yelp to 
display the appropriate topic.

Note that once yelp is opened to a topic, the user can browser through that 
"guide". Thus if such links were added to Ubuntu Desktop topics, the user might 
be encouraged to explore and find the rest of the Ubuntu Desktop docs: that is, 
it provides another entry point to the content, thus facilitating its use, 
knowledge of it, etc.

Cheers,
Kyle




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