[FM Discuss] generating online help

[adam hyde]

hey Kuros,

On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 21:16 +0100, politube wrote:
> Hi,
>  
>     I just joined the list... I recall seeing a floss manual 
> presentation at the transmission.cc meet recently. 

I think that might have been the presentation I did in Amsterdam?


> I would like to 
> create online help for www.politube.org and some suggestions were that I 
> talk to flossmanual about this. Ideally I want to have the following 
> features:
> 
>     * create context sensitive help (e.g. on a particular page of the
>       site user clicks help and the help for that page opens in a pop-up).

You could link directly to pages within FLOSS Manuals with a skin
attribute like this:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Audacity/DigitalAudio?skin=ajax


the above example is this page:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Audacity/DigitalAudio

with the ?skin=ajax on the end. We can out other skin references instead
such as the one Tactical Technology Collective are using for their
Citizens Journalism Toolkit:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Audacity/DigitalAudio?skin=cjt

If you can make a skin we can add it to our templating system.Then you
can call pages remotely and they will ahve the look and feel of your
site. Templates are extremely easy to make. You make an html page and
put the following:
%TEXT% 
where the content from floss manuals should appear. You can have in the
template any css elements that you like. Since FLOSS Manuals uses pure
xhtml you can do a lot of nice things with CSS to make it fit your site.

>     * the software for the help files is maintained on someone else's
>       service. I don't want to maintain a CMS/Wiki just for this
> purpose.

we have a 'live manual' api that enables you to embed pages within your
website/cms/blog by cutting and pasting 4 or 5 lines of html into your
html. It is available via the remix function (see step 3 of the remix,
and scroll down the page - http://www.flossmanuals.net/remix)


>     * the service should be minimally customizable to support the L&F
> of
>       the site.

see above

>     * searching/indexing ought be supported

this is not currently available with FM. It is possible for us to
implement it if you can tell us more about what you would like. If it
makes sense throughout the entire system we will implement it (although
I cant promise we can do it over night)

>     * As a last nice-to-have feature, users would be able to update the
>       help files.

currently anyone can edit a file in FM if they create an account. The
creation of an account is necessary so that we can properly accredit
modifications.

On this point - you could out a link in the template to the editable
version of the page, I can help you wiht this if this is the direction
you would like to do. 

> 
> Really, I think that this a job for a single CMS serving several 
> websites, not only containing help, but perhaps about pages, terms of 
> use etc. (which really classify as help, right?).


how does the above fit with your needs?

adam


> 
> As a minimal solution, perhaps I could use floss manuals to compose the 
> help, then click a button to generate/export HTML, which I tweak to 
> support my L&F. Is this a possibility? I sure miss the searching 
> capability on this though?
> 
> thanks in advance for your suggestions
> 
> Kuros
> 
> 
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-- 
Adam Hyde
FLOSS Manuals

http://www.flossmanuals.net