[sakai2-tcc] Help for help

[Matthew Jones]

I recently updated the help files based on changed made to the IU docs
after they hadn't been touched for well over a year. The process required a
lot of work, both using existing automated scripts to retrieve/transform
and update existing files and manual process to add/delete/replace any
other help content.

If you look at the subversion tab you can see all of the changes made
against trunk, and this was just to "catch us up" (
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-22891) Another problem with the
current help files is they are only translated into 3 other languages,
Portuguese, Russian and Chinese, with no other translations. And keeping
the translations up-to-date and correct seems like it can be even more work
than even keeping the English files up-to-date.

It looks like i18n is still a current limitation of the Edia KB tool (
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/KBT/Home). It's also not clear
if there's a way to easily import/export from this tool so an administrator
can easily take the work of others and not have to author everything
themselves. It doesn't look like Edia has put any development on this for
well over a year so it may need some work. I haven't actually installed it
and checked it out though.

I also remember Sam at Longsight developing some Drupal based tool, but not
sure the status or future of that either. I believe it was a hosted idea..

I've felt this help area was a problem for awhile and didn't get any
changes until the recent inclusion of the tooltips. It's something that
really needs someone dedicated to the technical side at least a part-time
effort, but you could say that about most areas of Sakai.

I won't be at the European conference, but will be at the Arizona
Unconference. However I'm not sure what the best course of action for this
area is. It seems like Edia KB is good but without i18n and import/export
it's not very useful as a replacement?

I'm not sure if we were using new incubation or current incubation process,
but in the past I believe we wanted new tools to have someone actively
supporting new and exiting issues as they came up. This is why some better
replacement tools (like News Feeds) are currently not in core.



On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 8:18 AM, Seth Theriault <slt at columbia.edu> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 7:30 AM, Berg, Alan <A.M.Berg at uva.nl> wrote:
>
> > I was wondering about the road map around the help functionality in
> Sakai.
> > Do we want increase flexibility through a combination of an updated tool
> such
> > as EDIA's knowledge base tool (
> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/KBT/Home)
> > and the tool tips pop ups. I could imagine a situation where we keep
> help up to date
> > information in a central database and the information can if so desired
> be updated
> > by local deployments. The on-line authoring is also truly interesting.
>
> Well, this is timely. There has also been discussion (and some action)
> since LA around decoupling the existing help tool and content from the
> IU KB database and simplifying the authoring process (via workflow,
> etc.) among those in the Documentation WG.
>
> As far as I am concerned, this is big enough now to warrant some
> attention to "a better Help" a big-ticket item for 2.10.
>
> Seth
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