[Bf-committers] Proposal for "View Docs" on Right Click

[Sean Olson]

Hi All,
Occasionally I try and step back from Blender and attempt to see it the way
a brand new user would.   I recently did this and saw a glaring problem.
 The 'View Docs' on Right click does not help Users.

Currently in Blender if you right click on 'almost' any button you will get
a menu like this:

[image: ss20111024205158.png]

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/79/ss20111024205158.png

Currently this 'View Docs' option is a very valuable for developers, but
users are left in the dark as the 'Docs' are only API docs.  I would like to
see a connection to the wiki USER documentation on this item.  There are a
couple of hurdles that need to be cleared in order to solve this problem.
1. There is a lack of  Documentation in the wiki on a large chunk of Blender
2. There is currently no way to auto-magically tell which docs each option
should point to.

What I would like to propose, is that we create  rna/operator id's to User
Manual Mapping, meaning this: Basically we need a group to Run through the
operators, and connect them to their relevant wiki pages.   This would be a
many to one relationship - so a bunch of ops/rna would possibly map to the
same wiki page.  If there was no relevant wiki page for the operators, a
stub page on the wiki would be generated, a page with something like, "This
Tool has no Documentation yet.  Please Help Document this Tool".  I spoke
with Campbell on this and he is on board if there is enough support on
mapping the rna/ops to the wiki docs.    (Perhaps a tool could be built for
Debug builds with an additional option in the right click menu, 'Map rna/op
to wiki page'.)

Additionally, we would have to decide on exactly how to do this UI wise.
 There are a number of options.
1. Additional Menu Item  - So we would have 'View User Docs' and 'View API
Docs'
2. Tie User Docs and API docs together in wiki.  So if you go to 'View Docs'
there would be a link from the API docs to the User docs and vice versa

My personal preference is the additional menu item.  I feel that Users
rarely want to look at API docs, but devs often look at both.

I think that a project like this could have a number of advantages
including:
-Organized Wiki
-More complete user docs
-Crowd sourcing documentation & involving the community in documentation
-Ease the learning curve of Blender
-Easy access to relevant wiki page for quick answers

Looking forward to thoughts/crits/and support for mapping.
-Sean