How can plugin Help stop being an Easter Egg

[emyoulation]

One of the improvements that has been mentioned is an extension of the “Help” for plugins beyond Gramplets. So the help_url will be a feature for all Plugins. One benefit is that the Available Gramps Updates for Addons dialog (the Addon Manager) could let you visit the feature’s documentation, before you have to choose which to install or skip.

And since some features don’t have a dialog where a button could be mounted, universal access to Help for plug-ins could be added to the Plugin Manager… Specifically for Tools or Reports, the right panel could have a Help for the right detail panel or in the Info dialog for the selected plugin.

The access to Help for both built-in and add-on Gramplets is hidden… unless the gramplet is unlocked/detached. Then a Help button appears for the floating dialog.

The capture above includes dialogs from the Plugin Manager Enhanced addon. But the Detailed Info Dialog from the original Plugin Manager is a bit more formatted… but that sacrifices a significant amount of screen space:

Maybe there could be a disussion about consolidating all these features into a single framework. The Report/Tool selector seems to have the cleanest GUI to build upon.

[Nick-Hall]

The new Addons Manager will include a few new features:

• A help url for every addon.
• An enhanced status category with possible values: Unstable, Experimental, Beta, Stable.
• A new audience category with possible values: Everyone, Developer, Expert.
• Maintainer names and email addresses. This allows for a maintainers to be different from the authors.
• Requirements lists. This will allow us to check the prerequisites prior to installation. In some limited cases it may be possible to install missing modules.
• Access third-party repositories such as the Isotammi addons.
• Filters to enable the user to find an addon easily.

The new user interface is heavily influenced by Matthias Kemmer’s addon listings web page.

I’ll try to get it finished tomorrow. I think that I have managed to incorporate all the suggestions I had from the feedback so far.

[emyoulation]

You’ve probably already tweaked the master to add help_url registrations for each addon.
But the sample .gpr.py files (like the GlockGramplet) are not marked as translatable.

Do the new registrations have the new URLs set as translatable? Will translators be able to set URLs so speakers of other languages will be able to take advantage of Help?

Another would also be nice if we can set to a local/relative URI to take advantage of Readme.md files (locally or in the GitHub addon-source

And will we be able to change the base URL away from the pre-defined https://gramps-project.org/wiki/ root? As the user recently requested (see quote below), being able to oint to a cache of downloaded webpages would (for the ‘first click’ anyway) give an offline alternative. (Although saving an offline copy of the main wikipages will probably resolve the interpage mediawiki links back to the Gramps-project.org domain rather than the cache. So second clicks will try to hit the net again.)

Gramps Offline User Manual / User Guide / Instructions

Hallo. More than 90% of the time the laptop I am using is not connected to the internet. I have installed Gramps successfully but I feel my stress levels elevate when I click on the Help menu then choose Get Help. Is an offline manual available, so I can learn Gramps offline? I know that the Gramps developers don’t get feedback on what people are looking up when using an offline manual, but I think it would be extremely helpful for people who work offline to have the choice to…learn Gramps o…

@emyoulation

ClockGramplet.gpr.py by Doug Blank

register(GRAMPLET,
         id= "Clock Gramplet",
         name=_("Clock"),
         description = _("Gramplet for demonstrating Cairo graphics"),
         height=100,
         expand=False,
         gramplet = 'ClockGramplet',
         gramplet_title=_("Clock"),
         status = STABLE,
         version = '0.0.32',
         gramps_target_version = "5.1",
         fname="ClockGramplet.py",
         help_url="Gramplets#GUI_Interface",
         )

[Nick-Hall]

@emyoulation

Do the new registrations have the new URLs set as translatable? Will translators be able to set URLs so speakers of other languages will be able to take advantage of Help?

Translation in the wiki is handled by appending a language code. For example, the Gramplets page in English is:

https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Gramplets

For French we would add /fr and the resultant page re-directs to:

https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Fr:Manuel_wiki_pour_Gramps_5.1_-_Gramplets

The language has to be listed as a translation for our manual pages.

There is no mechanism for changing the base path in our current code.

[emyoulation]

@Nick-Hall

the Gramplets page in English

The Reports links might be a better example to explore.

The main Report wiki page had to be padded out with section titles for all the 3rd party addons. The report dialogs Help button goes to the URL of the main page followed by a hashtag and the name of the report – regardless of the report being a built-in or add-on.

Even though it jumps directly to the subsection for the specific report, it is less confusing if the table of contents looks like the menu the user just navigated. So, the header Anchors have to be inserted in the same subgroupings, case-sensitive naming and alphabetical order as the menus.

And naturally, the Translated version of the Reports have translated Report names which means they can have different ordering in the menus and the translated wiki pages. (Giving the open nature of the wiki editing, there is little chance that we can make everyone aware of the need for continuity with English language anchor to augment the translated subheading.)

Which creates another maintenance and harmonization frequent failure point. It also violates the objective of avoiding sections that link outside the main chapter wiki pages — except See Also pages or or external links.

And the Tool dialogs has a different approach. (So the main Tools wiki page table of contents does not reflect the menu populated with add-ons.) Those buttons actually branch to a specific webpage. (Even though only some tools have UI dialogs. The others don’t have the possibility of Help buttons.)

The other types of add-on each approaches Help access differently.

There are a variety of types of plugins/addons, including:

• Database - add support for another database backend.
• Exporter - adds additional file format export options to Gramps
• Gramplet - adds a new Gramplet to Gramps, which can be activated by right-clicking on the Gramplet View
• Gramps View (mode) - adds a new view mode to the list of views available within a View Category
• Importer - adds additional file format import options to Gramps
• Map Service - adds new mapping options to Gramps
• Plugin lib - libraries that are present giving extra functionality. Can add, replace and or modifies built-in Gramps options.
• Quickreport**/**Quickview - a view that you can run by right-clicking on object, or if a person quickview, then through the Quick View Gramplet
• Report - adds a new output report / includes Website - output a static genealogy website based on your Gramps Family Tree data.
• Rule - adds new filter rules.
• Tool - adds a utility that helps process data from your family tree.