Creating Documentation
BlitzPlus Forums/BlitzPlus Programming/Creating Documentation
| ||
| What's the best way of creating documentation to go with a Windows-based application in everyone's opinion. Standalone (pdf etc)? Hard-coded in Blitz? HTML (I am perfectly happy devloping HTML-based stuff), but I seem to recall some issues with the way Blitz handles the interface. Feel free to shout me down for being a fool if I am wrong :-) ) Anything else? All suggestions gratefully received. Paul |
| ||
| I guess it's kinda personal .. I never read manuals as imho one should be able to operate a -good designed- app without a manual. E.g., if you do need a manual, then the app is not properly designed. The only thing I might need is some keyboard shortcut overview .. but I prefer to discover them myself :) html is an easy way .. PDF tends to be somewhat 'heavy' and clumsy to me. Usually you want a quick help for a specfic button, usually a single line. For a quick help-system it might be an idea to make a dedicated help function in B+ .. I did something like that last week. Just a simple window which accepts a bank with specially formatted text. When I want help for another element, then I send the help for that new element to my help-viewer. With formatted text I mean that I can load any txtfile from HD, and the formatter auto formats it to a specific width (with wordwrap etc.) Another option would be to place the little help line in the statusbar of a window (down at the bottom), just like photoshop shows the alt/shift/ctrl combis for specific functions, such as 'transform'. So, at least make a difference between the major manual with all the backgrounds etc., and quick context sensitive help. |
| ||
| I recommend having a web page on the net because then you can change the documentation if it needs updating. I usually have a menu in my apps called "On-Line Docs". When selected it just calls an execfile("www.blah.com/product_help.html") function. It works for me. |
| ||
| If you want one of those menu's which appear when you press F1 i think the best app to use for that is Accviz HelpMaker. I use it for all my help files. |
| ||
| use HTML - and you can upload it to your website |
   |