[drupal-devel] [task] Admin help in core modules
cel4145
drupal-devel at drupal.org
Mon Sep 19 03:30:31 UTC 2005
Issue status update for
http://drupal.org/node/26139
Post a follow up:
http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/26139
Project: Drupal
Version: cvs
Component: other
Category: tasks
Priority: normal
Assigned to: Robin Monks
Reported by: Robin Monks
Updated by: cel4145
Status: patch (code needs review)
If the patch passes code review, I vote for getting it in as is. Rather
than updating this patch further with new documentation, it would seem
to be better to finalize it as necessary to get it in right now for
HEAD. It's been months since this admin/help text update was started,
and the existing documentation in this patch represents significant
usability improvements. Seeing this new version of admin/help right now
in 4.7 after the freeze will help to motivate more people to contribute
assistance. We can incorporate any new changes in the documentation
itself into an update for the official 4.7 release (since we need to do
this anyway).
cel4145
Previous comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:02:17 +0000 : Robin Monks
Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/4-6-2-helptext.patch (126.02 KB)
This patch adds help text to all core modules per the information at
http://drupal.org/node/24768. This patch should be applied to 4.6.x
and CVS HEAD.
Robin
+1: No broken links. Easy access to core module help is going to make
Drupal much more accessible / lower the learning curve.
Andrew
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Fri, 01 Jul 2005 05:40:04 +0000 : Dries
Quick review:
1. We don't glue words together: %administerprofile should be
%administer-profile, %administerwatchdogevents should be
%administer-watchdog-events, etc.
2. We try not to abbreviate words: %stats should be %statistics.
3. We don't use spaces in a href-tags!
Wrong:
<a href = "%foo" title = "my foo">Good:
<a href="%foo" title="my foo"%gt;
4. Why has this line been added: error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_PARSE);?
5. You can't write "administer >> menus >> add menu" without escaping
the >>'s. In results in invalid XHTML.
6. Writing "administer >> menus >> add menu" is dangerous because these
paths are dynamic (eg. they can be changed using the menu module). I
guess it is uncommon though.
7. You changed settings.php.
8. We should avoid using the word "node" in user-level documentation.
We try to use "post" or "content".
9. Some title-attributes of the a href-tag start with a capital letter,
some with a small letter. Most title-attribute are useless; they don't
add any value. In fact, they are often less descriptive than the
content enclosed in the a href-tag. At least *90%* of all
title-attributes can be *removed*!
Examples:
<a href = "cron.php" title = "cron page">cron page</a> (redundant
title)
<a href = "%adminsettings" title = "">administer >> settings</a> (empty
title)
<a href = "%addavocabulary" title = "add a vocabulary">administer >>
taxonomy >> add vocabulary</a> (useless title)
<a href = "%administertaxonomy" title = "administer
taxonomy">administer >> taxonomy</a> (useless title)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 05:45:07 +0000 : Dries
Also, the patch only applies partially against HEAD. 6 modules don't
get updated.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 06:34:05 +0000 : Amazon
Quick review:
1. We don't glue words together: %administerprofile should be
%administer-profile, %administerwatchdogevents should be
%administer-watchdog-events, etc.
Ok, we can change that.
2. We try not to abbreviate words: %stats should be %statistics.
Ok, I'll change the Drupal handbook source for this.
3. We don't use spaces in a href-tags!
Wrong:
Good:
> menus >> add menu" without escaping the >>'s. In results in invalid
XHTML.
Ok, we will escape the 's. That is a mistake.
6. Writing "administer >> menus >> add menu" is dangerous because these
paths are dynamic (eg. they can be changed using the menu module). I
guess it is uncommon though.
Admin help is for the new users who are most likely to be using the
navigation menu. The barrier of adapting new user documentation is too
high for a fully dynamic system. Could you suggest some phrasing that
acceptable?
In the navigation menu: administer >> menus >> add menu. But even that
is subject to change.
Please advise.
7. You changed settings.php.
We will fix that.
8. We should avoid using the word "node" in user-level documentation.
We try to use "post" or "content".
Ok, we will remove the word node and use post instead.
9. Some title-attributes of the a href-tag start with a capital letter,
some with a small letter. Most title-attribute are useless; they don't
add any value. In fact, they are often less descriptive than the
content enclosed in the a href-tag. At least 90% of all
title-attributes can be removed!
We were told to add titles for accessibility reasons. If this is not
the case we can remove them.
Examples:
cron page (redundant title)
redundant, but harmful?
administer >> settings (empty title)
Ok, we will find all the empty titles and either remove them or
populate them with appropriate titles.
administer >> taxonomy >> add vocabulary (useless title)
The user base is changing. Simple english phrases are more meaningful
to new users. I believe it's a mistake to overlook what is simple to
the advanced user, but valuable to the new user.
administer >> taxonomy (useless title)
Again, a simple phrase while seemingly redundant to advanced users who
are not intimidated by symbols such as >> can be helpful to new users,
and those who rely on titles for accessibility. The hope was that
themes that supported mouse over text would benefit over time as the
documentation improved. However, it's a minor point and we can strip
it away all the titles if it doesn't conform to Drupal guidelines and
standards. I'd prefer to allow the documentation to evolve with more
descriptive titles over time as documentation contributions increase.
We will aim to have a new patch meeting the points highlighted above in
approximately the next 12 hours. We will also apply the same standards
to the 30 contributed modules.
Thanks for the quick evaluation. It's greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Kieran
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 13:32:38 +0000 : Goba
Forum.module, locale.module, drupal.module etc. patches include some
HTML errors, starting a new paragraph, then immediately starting
another one. It might be a good idea to validate the HTML sources of
the helps so random fixes in the future will not give more job to the
translators. You can do this with extracting the po files, and
examinging the files extracted. It is possible that given a standard
HTML enclosure (html, head, body) the pot files will validate as XHTML,
I never actually tried large scale help text validation.
There are also other HTML validity problems in the search module patch
(unclosed list item tag). There might be others elsewhere.
It might also be a good idea to automatically spell check the strings
(as it was done with the dev comments before), so that it is less
likely that these need modification later. Keep in mind that
translating all this stuff takes quite a bit of time (this is why these
are not translated in some cases), so it would be good to do the best
for the first time (which is your intention anyway :).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 13:38:43 +0000 : killes at www.drop.org
I think it would be nice if the help texts could be split up in one
t()ed string per paragraph. That way they are much more likely to be at
least partially translated by translators. Also, you can then leave the
paragraph tags out from the t()ed strings and have a bit less html in
those.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 13:50:53 +0000 : Goba
As a practicioning translator, and as the one who translated most of the
long help texts in the complete Hungarian translation (and will do the
updates :), I say having the text flow intact is more important then
"helping" translators with breaking up text in smaller chunks. Having
big chunks ensure that:
* That the string will not show up in the locale cache (because of
their size), and will not slow down pages.
* It is easier to translate the complete texts, as you know you need to
use the very same terminology around, and will not use random different
translations, and you will also refrain from repeating the same
"language salt", thus leading to quality translations
* Users of Drupal will not be faced with half translated help chunks
(which is especially funny, if the middle of some English text is
translated).
By the way, Drupal used to have per paragraph t(), but then changed to
use one t(), which optimises database queries, and given the above I
think it is better for the user and translator too.
Just my two cents...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:16:51 +0000 : killes at www.drop.org
Goba, I knew you would answer like that. ;)
I think that the single paragraphs are sufficiently selfcontained to
translate them in pieces. I have looked at the aggregator help as an
example.
You yourself are a kind of an übertranslator who'd also translate the
whole bible in one PO chunk. ;)
So I think we should look at other translations, too.
I am using a very nice PO editor, but I know that I will never
translate chunks of text that are more than two or threee sentence
long. It takes too much time. But if I can split it up, I might
translate the small pieces one by one. And I'd also be sure that I do
not have to change everything just because a typo was fixed in the
original.
The cache argument does not really count, because the pearagraphs will
still be longer than 75 characters.
Also you already need to know where your translation will appear to do
any Drupal translation. that is you will see the translated paragaphs
in contex with the non-translated parts.
I agree that a half done itnerface looks funny, but its better than
nothing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:36:42 +0000 : Goba
Killes, your reasons are valid, but I still prefer the all-in-one
approach. :) I will deal with it either way, so feel free to pick one
way. I remember the transition from per-paragraph t()s to all-in-one
t()s, and I think it was a good choice (and I have not heard much
complaints, although I am not active enough in the translator community
nowadays).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:48:43 +0000 : killes at www.drop.org
I firmly believed the reason for not getting complaints is that nobody
even thought to translate those helptexts and is also a reason for not
haveing many 100% translations.
There are a number of translations that are listed as being 100%, but
that is at least partially due to the script which makes
http://drupal.org/translation-status
It only counts the non-translated strings that are in the PO files in
each directory, not the number of strings in the POT files.
The Ukrainian translation for example is listed as being 100%, but
there are only 10 out of 33 in the repository. Guess I should fix the
script.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:53:15 +0000 : Goba
Yes, it might be a good idea to msgmerge the po files with the actual
pot files in the same CVS branch, and then check for completeness, so
that a proper overview is available.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 15:55:37 +0000 : stefan nagtegaal
So, now what is the plan?
Per paragraph t()-ing or per helptext t()-ing?
I'll volunteer for making such a patch..
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:02:53 +0000 : killes at www.drop.org
I am changing that to cvs.
My vote is obviously for splitting things up. PO editors were made to
translate small pieces of text and not novels or even essays.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:59:24 +0000 : stefan nagtegaal
Then, so be it Killes!
I have to agree with you completely. Due to this (and inline with
theme_placeholder($text), introduced lately by Steven/Dries), I'll come
up with a patch which implements the helptexts, and introduce the
following theme_* functions to get things a little easier and more
drupalish:
<?php
function theme_text($text) {
return "<p>$text</p>";
}
function theme_code($text) {
return "<code>$text</code>";
}
?>
This makes all the <p>-tags inside the helptexts redundant and helps us
to clean up the texts a little more by removing a little more HTML out
of it.. The same with the <code>
I am still thinking about how we should handle (un)ordered and
definition lists, inside the helptexts.. Has someone another plan for
this?
Please let me know what you think about this idea. I worked a lot on
the helptexts before, and tried even mroe times to make them better and
easier to translate. Due to that, I think this is the right thing todo..
But, maybe I am wrong..
I'll still volunteer for patching core/HEAD to get this in..
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 10:03:37 +0000 : Dries
For now, let's not split each paragraph and let's not introduce new
functions. Just fix up the patch as is.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tue, 05 Jul 2005 14:06:41 +0000 : cel4145
Dries wrote,
"6. Writing "administer >> menus >> add menu" is dangerous because
these paths are dynamic (eg. they can be changed using the menu
module). I guess it is uncommon though."
I think we have to go with the assumption that if a user is changing
menu paths then they should have some awareness that the path itself
will no longer be valid, and as long as the paths are links, they'll
still be able to access the correct pages.
Kieran wrote,
"9. . . . We were told to add titles for accessibility reasons. If this
is not the case we can remove them."
See Dive Into Accessibility Adding titles to links [1]:
"Not all links should have titles. If the link text is the name of an
article, don't add a title; the link text itself is descriptive enough.
But if you read the link text by itself, out of context, and can't
figure out what it points to, add a title."
So the title must be more descriptive than the original link text in
order to increase accessibility. One's that merely restate the
original link text serve no purpose.
[1] http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_14_adding_titles_to_links.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tue, 05 Jul 2005 18:18:16 +0000 : Dries
Charlie: let's turn that into an official documentation guideline?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wed, 06 Jul 2005 03:54:29 +0000 : cel4145
" let's turn that into an official documentation guideline?"
Done. Updated documentation authoring guidelines 5a [2].
[2] http://drupal.org/about/authoring
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:32:29 +0000 : Robin Monks
Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/drupal.-.admin.-.help.patch (131.1 KB)
New patch, hopefuly for 4.7.
Comments, raves and rants welcome!
Robin
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:56:56 +0000 : m3avrck
Never really used the help in Drupal, but going through this, looks
really solid! Patch actually applies cleanly too, minus the
settings.php included at the end ;) Looks good to me!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sun, 18 Sep 2005 11:33:09 +0000 : Dries
m3avrck: try to be more specific! What does 'looks good to me' mean?
Does it mean you carefully studied and proof-read all changes, or that
you merely skimmed over it. The former is helpful, the latter is not.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sun, 18 Sep 2005 15:17:06 +0000 : Amazon
These patches, minus the settings.php, have been in CivicSpace for the
last 2.5 months. If you want some end user feedback I am happy to get
some.
WebChick and I are reviewing the comments on all the modules and
improving the documentation by clarifying what's there, or creating
child pages. If any one has content or links they would like to see
added please let me know. We will aim to get a new patch to include
the latest improvements in the admin help documentation. This patch
will direct users to the handbook and so it is still accessible to
them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sun, 18 Sep 2005 15:31:06 +0000 : mgifford
This is a nice feature to include in Drupal. It makes it a lot more
usable if there is documentation that less tech savy users can consult
when they are lost.
Having online documentation built in also is re-assuring to folks when
being trained to use the code.
Also allows for more technical folks to pick up and start using the
software without being trained.
Mike
ps. I haven't reviewed this specific patch but I have used the code in
CivicSpace.
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