Is there some reason why the myriad tools in Squeak don't have even a placeholder button or menu item for online help? From my newbies point of view it is very frustrating to try to do something (refactor to extract a method with a parameter, most recently) and be confronted with a totally new editor (Selector editor, in this case) and not have any idea about what the panels and buttons mean (Up? Down? Ok?). I finally figured it out, but it took 15 minutes of blind trial and error. It is very disheartening and a huge hurdle for someone who wants to get started with Squeak.
Shouldn't online help be a standard part of any IDE framework, making it easy for tool writers to add a few lines of online help in a standard way? Perhaps include some url links? Heck, if the tool even had a standard link (e.g. on SystemWindow) to a standard place on a Squeak wikis, anyone (even me) could contribute to the help.
And yes, I know that getting those lines written is a separate matter.
That sounded a lot like a complaint ... it was not meant to be one! Is there someplace (current or in the works) for standard rudimentary online help?
"itsme213" itsme213@hotmail.com wrote in message news:fgd80g$8vg$1@ger.gmane.org...
Is there some reason why the myriad tools in Squeak don't have even a placeholder button or menu item for online help? From my newbies point of view it is very frustrating to try to do something (refactor to extract a method with a parameter, most recently) and be confronted with a totally new editor (Selector editor, in this case) and not have any idea about what the panels and buttons mean (Up? Down? Ok?). I finally figured it out, but it took 15 minutes of blind trial and error. It is very disheartening and a huge hurdle for someone who wants to get started with Squeak.
Shouldn't online help be a standard part of any IDE framework, making it easy for tool writers to add a few lines of online help in a standard way? Perhaps include some url links? Heck, if the tool even had a standard link (e.g. on SystemWindow) to a standard place on a Squeak wikis, anyone (even me) could contribute to the help.
And yes, I know that getting those lines written is a separate matter.
Hello itsyou213,
Is there some reason why the myriad tools in Squeak don't have even a placeholder button or menu item for online help? From my newbies point of
Squeak has balloon help which is like windows hints but bigger. This is easy to attach to any morph.
view it is very frustrating to try to do something (refactor to extract a method with a parameter, most recently) and be confronted with a totally new editor (Selector editor, in this case) and not have any idea about what the panels and buttons mean (Up? Down? Ok?). I finally figured it
They have balloon help, just hover over the button.
out, but it took 15 minutes of blind trial and error. It is very disheartening and a huge hurdle for someone who wants to get started with Squeak.
That one took long for me too and I still haven't written a note so it's a bit of try and error every time I use it. With the other tools I had no such problems. Pretty much know one know all.
As for documentation: search the swiki (wiki.squeak.org) for documentation team or contact Matthew Fulmer if you want to help.
And with Squeak by example from Stephane Ducasse Squeak has a recent and up to date introduction.
Anyway, Welcome here!
Cheers
Herbert mailto:herbertkoenig@gmx.net
Squeak has balloon help which is like windows hints but bigger. This is easy to attach to any morph.
Good point. I still think newbies would benefit a lot from a standard help button or menu item, even if it results in just showing a class comment or launching a browser to a relevant wiki page (help within Squeak linking to wiki pages would be more helpful than just the wiki).
Thanks for the info.
itsme213 wrote:
Is there some reason why the myriad tools in Squeak don't have even a placeholder button or menu item for online help? From my newbies point of view it is very frustrating to try to do something (refactor to extract a method with a parameter, most recently) and be confronted with a totally new editor (Selector editor, in this case) and not have any idea about what the panels and buttons mean (Up? Down? Ok?). I finally figured it out, but it took 15 minutes of blind trial and error. It is very disheartening and a huge hurdle for someone who wants to get started with Squeak.
Shouldn't online help be a standard part of any IDE framework, making it easy for tool writers to add a few lines of online help in a standard way? Perhaps include some url links? Heck, if the tool even had a standard link (e.g. on SystemWindow) to a standard place on a Squeak wikis, anyone (even me) could contribute to the help.
And yes, I know that getting those lines written is a separate matter.
Hello... umm... Itsme.
I've been using Squeak for a few years and I couldn't agree more.
There are documentation and tutorials at:
http://www.squeak.org/Documentation
This page is the "official" page containing links to Squeak documentation. There are also books - the old Smalltalk books are still largely relevant, and the tools are still used in the same way.
If you want to contribute, you can help with the documentation effort: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2983
The community would also welcome code contributions, more documentation and discussions on the Squeak mailing list about this. As a group of volunteers, there's an endemic shortage of time to work on this sort of thing so any help is appreciated. Online help from within the Squeak environment would be very useful!
Gulik.
beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Herbert König -
itsme213 -
Michael van der Gulik