HelpOn

PURPOSE

This action macro is used to get help on other extensions.

VERSION HISTORY

CALLING SEQUENCE

http://wikiserver/WikiName?action=HelpOn

PROCEDURE

You get a pull down list of available extensions and after selection the help from inside of the routine is shown

The extensions below the MoinMoin path are indicated by the prefix MM- while the others are indicated by a W- in the list

Please remove the version number from the filename.

MODIFICATION HISTORY

@copyright: 2005 by Reimar Bauer (R.Bauer@fz-juelich.de)
@license: GNU GPL, see COPYING for details.
Version: 1.3.5-1

1.3.5-2 bug fix if no routine desription is defined
        minor change from table output to preformatted text
1.3.5-3 code refactored
1.3.5-4 PRE does not need an additional line break
1.5.1-5 removed request.cfg.excluded_actions
1.5.4-6 2006-07-04 RB: some PEP8 changes
1.6.0-7 RB code change for 1.6 release, string replaced
1.6.0-8 RB code changed to get multiple language support for plugins (local plugins not implemented now)

Discussion

Is there a demo of this somewhere? -- TheAnarcat 2005-10-16 01:00:05

Hi Reimar! This macro is a great idea! I will include it in my wiki! I really do like the idea to use the documentation in the .py files for help. However I've found some minor issues:

• Version1.5.4-6 does not work correctly on XP systems and DesktopEdition. Calling help on specific extensions triggers an IO error:  [Errno 2] No such file or directory: u'D:\\MoinMoinDesktop\\PythonVersion/action/LocalSiteMap.py'. The correct path would have been: D:\MoinMoinDesktop\PythonVersion\MoinMoin\action\LocalSiteMap.py traceback.htm

• Calling the macro right after startup from the frontpage with  http://localhost:8080/?action=HelpOn  also causes some trouble: You even don't get the drop-down-box in the message field rather the error "You are not allowed to call action HelpOn from this site". Underneath this message box it is stated: "This page does not exist yet. You can create a new empty page, or use one of the page templates."

-- OliverSiemoneit 2006-11-20 15:36:56

Hi Oliver, there will be an update soon. It is planned to add it to 1.6. I do have it in use on our wikis may be here is an old one only. Lets see how much internet I have here. Greetings from Hohn -- ReimarBauer 2006-11-20 16:36:50

Update Currently we do believe it does only make sense to integrate it into the codebase if we find an easy way to solve i18n for different languages on integrated help pages. The easiest solution may be to have for each plugin at someday an own page below HelpContents to refer to using this action. These pages could be translated as every other help page too. -- ReimarBauer 2007-08-31 14:04:22

Hi Reimar! I liked the intial idea of ActionMarket/HelpOn very much, that plug-ins are self-documenting (which is done by retriving the  __doc__ from the py code. So not only Moin built-in plug-ins but also 3rd-party-stuff has some help functionality. Very cool idea. This will also work nicely in my eyes if these things would be met:

• Need to provide a common template for the header of a plug-in.
  • Make a short header-template

  • Put notes on ActionMarket, MoinDev, so that 3rd-party-dev get to know this and do also comply to this

  • Tell them: You need to document your plug-in shortly according to the header-template
  • Be a role model for others: Change headers in Moin's built-in plug-ins accordlingly.
• Make i18n support for plugins work.

  • Put notes on ActionMarket, MoinDev that developpers should take care of the new i18n support for plug-ins. This is urgently needed so as not to have an inconsisten ui in different languages.

  • Tell them: i18n support is also done not only for a nice and consistent ui but also for the short self-documentation of the plug-ins

Maybe we can even do this: since the __doc__ is some comment, we can put wikimarkup in it and render it in HelpOn with the respective parser an as a virtual page - not in the message field. So we can add also wikilinks in the __doc__ e.g. to a page in the helparea of Moin where you can find an exhaustive explanation (however this needs a solution for i18n help pages as you have already mentioned above). I would not drop the idea of self-documenting plug-ins. It's a cool feature other wikis definetly miss (maybe they even cannot do this because of their programming language??) What do you think?

-- OliverSiemoneit 2007-09-01 21:43:57

Hi Oliver! Its not dropped its more delayed since we have done enough separate help pages which does happen on the way to 2.0. We like to make i18n support for plugins work too. Currently just before 1.6 it does not make sense to change now the organisation of help pages. The easiest solution will be to do i18n on MoinMaster for builtin and using virtual pages from HelpOn. Parameter description for keywords is nearly self described if the new arg parser from JohannesBerg is used. So minimum beside copyright and license would be purpose and using the arg parser and may be one example call. (Possible calls should be covered with some unit test scripts.)

-- ReimarBauer 2007-09-02 17:09:31