Style Guidelines for Help System

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redndahead's picture

We should start to create a style guideline for the help system. This would help to make the help files consistent in look and feel. I have started a wiki page here http://groups.drupal.org/node/17300

Hopefully we can discuss how each part should look here and lay it out on the wiki.

Edit: Wiki page removed look at the other pages posted below.

Comments

Please incorporate into the existing style guide!

LeeHunter's picture

There is already a Drupal style guide for documentation (http://drupal.org/about/authoring). We really shouldn't be developing separate styles for the help system! If the current style guide doesn't work for the help system we should be revising it, not creating a whole new guide.

For reference, the style

keith.smith's picture

For reference, the style guide for the existing (embedded) core help pages is at http://drupal.org/node/24566. If there are results from the effort on groups, then the output from that process will need to be reflected in revisions to that page as necessary.

Thank you

redndahead's picture

I'm sorry I didn't know about this. It seems that the two links posted above contradict each other in places. I.E. Menu paths one uses > and another uses >>. So this will have to be resolved in places.

Don't apologize! :)

keith.smith's picture

Neither one of those pages get the attention they deserve. And, they both predate me so I'm uncertain why we have two of them (other than one being for pages on d.o. and one being for help stuck into core).

As to the menu paths thing, I don't know of a single place in core that uses the > and >> on menu trails. That's something that went away long ago -- in the case of embedded help, we either link to the page directly or assume that the embedded help is being displayed on the page in question. It's really more of an issue for help on d.o. where we might need to tell someone how to get to the page we're looking at (and obviously can't link to the internal settings pages of users' sites).

Removed Wiki Page

redndahead's picture

The wiki page has been removed. As far as menu paths I think they are important as links to the actual section take you away from your help file. They are even more helpful when using the new help in D7. Since the new help will create popups you can view the help in one window while doing the steps in another window.

Ugh. Yes, you're right. I

keith.smith's picture

Ugh. Yes, you're right. I didn't think about this problem because the advanced help patch for core doesn't use popups. We can still link to the actual pages themselves, though, so we have less of a problem here than d.o. does (since it can't link to pages on user sites).

No, you are mistaken! :-)

Gurpartap Singh's picture

...because the advanced help patch for core doesn't use popups.

Try the "More help" links at admin/build/modules.

Oops. Except for there,

keith.smith's picture

Oops. Except for there, apparently. Thanks, Gurpartap.

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