[drupal-docs] Idea - move help text out of code into database

Kieran Lal kieran at civicspacelabs.org
Fri May 13 18:08:50 UTC 2005


> First off, this, as a documentation spec, would have been helpful up
> front when asked to participate in the sprint. Not only that, it would
> have been useful to discuss the spec in order to improve on the
> rhetorical strategy. I also think that it's possible to construct the
> documentation in the handbook somewhat along these lines so that the
> only thing that would have to be added would be the link to the  
> handbook
> itself when moving to the guide.

Sorry, I rushed it.  Several developers have been making patches to  
their admin help text to make it more consistent and to reduce the  
length.   I also felt that the docs team had reached consensus that a  
few short paragraphs in the admin help documentation was what we were  
shooting for.   Maybe I was just agreeing with myself :-) Truth was I  
was more interested in getting anything researched and written at all  
so I could have a clue how to use Drupal.   I also thought we should  
see what everyone writes and see if some consensus builds.  With that  
said, it's not like what you wrote is not immediately useful.  With  
some further peer review I feel it could go directly into the new  
handbook pages.

Thanks for giving me guidelines for the admin help text.  I think we  
will largely have to re-write them :-)  For round three I'll ask the  
question does this paragraph of benefits of the module make sense to  
a new user?   Does this paragraph of tasks convey the most common  
benefits?

>> But I haven't heard any opposition to getting links  to new  
>> handbook modules pages. Adding links would greatly improve the doc  
>> teams ability to update documentation that users would benefit from.
> Not sure what you mean by this?

For all 60 of the modules admin help documentation we have added  
links to the new handbook pages.    Currently there is either no  
documentation in admin help or there are no links to further  
documentation.   Having a link to each handbook module page from a  
Drupal site allows the doc team to provide documentation directly to  
users.   Connecting Drupal users directly to the work of the doc team  
is a big deal.

Cheers,
Kieran
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