[drupal-docs] Why we decided to add reference to the drupal handbook in administration help

Angie Byron drupal-docs at webchick.net
Thu Sep 29 06:30:04 UTC 2005


> I don't mind the administrator seeing this, but the end-user of the person's site must NEVER see this, unless the administrator puts that information in the title, footer, or somewhere else on the page.

Just to be clear, this link would be *only* at the bottom of documentation pages 
within /admin/help. This means the user must have some sort of admin privileges 
to view it. It wouldn't be displayed anywhere else (header, footer, etc.).

> I think there has been a discussion about this:- RSS or XML'ing the data from the handbooks directly into the modules at connect time if available? Of course a localized copy should be kept, for incase development is not live, but basically this means the following:
> 
> 1. Drupal ships with version X of help documentation.
> 2. At connect time (setup time mostly) it connects to Drupal.org and compare help versions.
> 3. If new version is version Y (assuming Y follows X) then download and update the information.
> 4. If not, connection is deferred until next cron job or setup, or whatever time.

Oi, geez! ;) One thing at a time! ;)

Actually that's an interesting idea, and would allow an easy way to update help 
between major versions of Drupal (for typos, clarifications, additions, etc.). 
I'm just not sure how it would work in practice with the help system as it 
currently is, though. Help text is stored within .module files, not in the 
database at all, so it would require write access to the modules directory and 
this is probably not desirable due to potential security risks (user somehow 
uploading a "rogue" module).

However, moving the help to a database table is another option which I've seen 
discussed elsewhere, and if that happened something on this order would be 
feasible I think.



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