Re: Barriers to entry<br><br>Jennifer, I found it incredibly helpful having the PHP and HTML posted on the standard page - being that I can write HTML but not PHP, but am marginally PHP literate, that (and peeking at the patch you posted for a few other hints) was enough for me to be able to adapt a help function on my own, which to me is amazing! (And the closest I've come to writing any PHP code.)<br>
<br>I don't really consider myself a "developer", and wanted to be able to go further than just editing online docs, and I have been able to, but it of course required effort and a willingness to learn new tools. And it always will, because let's face it, this a web application, and it is made of code! No matter how advanced our APIs get, there is always going to be some things you can't access or work on without working in the code itself.<br>
<br>I would hope that most people *would* have an inclination to learn further (and if they choose not to, then that is a fair choice). What I found incredibly helpful getting to the point where, as still a non-developer (ie. I don't know how to write PHP code) was this (and these 3 things seem less scary as separate steps, so maybe focus on #1 and #2 as separate sessions):<br>
<br>1. Having someone walk me through setting up a local install on MAMP, use PHPmyadmin, and getting a basic list of what commands I needed to know in command line.<br><br>2. Having the issue queue/patch review workflow explained and shown to me, along with learning the commands to apply and revert patches, do a diff, and reset my codebase to HEAD.<br>
<br>3. And this is not *necessary* but having at least a willingness to learn to read (and hopefully one day, write, code). I have so far self-learned HTML and CSS (with help from friends and coworkers), and can sort of fumble my way through reading PHP to the point where I can cut and paste things into the right place. But that is something people have to be pretty self driven to accomplish.<br>
<br>The biggest challenge is finding a way to make these things seem exciting to people rather than scary, and the only thing I can attribute that to for me is having very enthusiastic and patient people around me who have made certain I didn't get discouraged.<br>
<br>Re: How to conceptualize the help system<br><br>Is there an issue filed on d.o somewhere about this? It's not been on my radar - and I can only assume this is past the eleventh hour for D7 to try and make that sort of a conceptual shift. But that doesn't mean it's not something worth thinking about some more.<br>
<br>And really, I do think the new structure of the help content accommodates that user-focused approach better. The About section, being about what the module does, and the Uses section telling you how it can be used. No, it doesn't give you a step-by-step on how to do things, but that is in the handbook.<br>
<br>Ariane<br><br>