[Bf-docboard] Feature suggestion: integrated manual

[Bart]

Hi Stefano,

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Stefano Selleri wrote:

> > * Access from the full manual from the help menu (by opening a browser)
> On a local file, on an internet connection or on a 'let the user decide in
> the 'I' window?
> 
> I'm for third option, with Manual downloadable as a _separate_ package from
> blender, because between Blender's strong point is compactness, and
> integrating the manual
> in the distribution would kill this featuure

I think that it would be the nicest solution to do this as follows:

- The Blender package that people download does NOT contain any 
documentation. Hence it will stay compact.
- During installation, you can switch on the 'dynamic documentation 
updater' (or whatever) function.
- Blender will download the full documentation set and store it on the 
local filesystem.
- Periodically, Blender will check to see if there are any changes to be 
downloaded.
- Provide mechanism to manually install the documentation zip files (for 
example for people behind firewalls who bring Blender to the office on 
CD).

I really prefer to serve the documentation from the local filesystem, For 
most people this will be faster, and on the long run it will reduce the 
traffic on the blender.org site as well.

> > * Access to specific manual entries from tooltips or a 'helpmode' for
> > the user
> >   interface: click on the 'help' icon, the cursor changes into a
> > question mark,
> >   click on a control and get information about it.
> 
> This would be really nice, but requires a (consistent) labelling of all
> chapters,
> sections and subsections, a lookup table etc. etc.

Yep. But surely that wouldn't be too difficult, would it? I'll give the 
issue some thought.

> > * Automatic update mechanism that downloads only the changed sections of
> > the
> >   manual either at Blender startup or when the user selects 'update
> > manual'.
> >
> Not sure, I'd add a separate application - separate from blender binary -
> getting installed with the doc and which can be called from within the
> manual, when you
> browse it. This would make manual self-updating and the update application
> updatable
> itself separately from Blender

Hrm.... I think I'd prefer to do it inside Blender as it would be much 
more consistent for the end-user (you launch Blender and see a message 
'A documentation update of 150kb is available. Do you wish to download 
it?'). 

The application itself could be quite small (I think you could even do 
it in Python), and there would be no documentation included in the Blender 
download itself - everything is done via the update mechanism. 

-- 
Bart Veldhuizen, bart@vrotvrot.com
Web Droid