Application Help Content Management and Delivery

Overall

OpenPetra currently does not have application help (usually launched with the 'F1' key).

The goal of this project is to set up the technical platforms for editing, creating and publishing of the application help with the aim of having the application help output in the so-called 'WebHelp' format. Writing the content is not part of this project (with the exception of the creation of very limited content to prove that the technical platforms work as desired).

The technical platforms should use one of the two tools mentioned in the section 'Tools for Evaluation' for the major parts of what we want to achieve with this project.

Requirements

The requirements listed here are in addition to what is listed in the section 'Requirements'!

Key Requirements: Met Automatically by DocBook's 'WebHelp'

The key requirements for the Help system we are aiming to have that is that it needs to be able to run in a web browser, run cross-platform (Windows, Linux and Apple OS X), must have a full-text search, and translations must be possible.

Also, the help system must be accessible "online" and "offline".

• With 'online' we mean that the Help system can be accessed via a website, like the 'Calenco' documentation which is found here). The advantage of this is that the content can be kept highly up-to-date.
• With "offline" we mean that the Help system needs to work totally without any Internet connection, which is not easy if one wants a full-text search ability and one does not want to install a local webserver on the user's machine, which would be overkill just for achieving that. WebHelp has that offline capability even for the full-text search.

The application help output we have chosen with DocBook's 'WebHelp' meets all those key requirements.

URL Part That Specifies a Help Topic Must Remain the Same if Content is Modified

TODO

Optional Features

The requirements listed here are in addition to what is listed in the section 'Optional Features'!

Users Can Leave Comments on Topics

Integrate a User Comment Form as found here ('Post a Comment on xyz' section of the web page).

Expected Outcome

General

Attempts to realise the individual requirements (and possibly the optional features) listed on this page, as well as the ones here, should be made with both products.

Once this is done with both products, a write-up should be done of the 'pros' and 'cons' of each products.

Based on the write-up we will make a judgement. We are then planning to use our favoured product for the purposes of authoring application help for OpenPetra.

WebHelp Output

TODO

Optional/Bonus: Integration into OpenPetra ('F1'-Key Hookup)

TODO