I hid this in 'General'; don't want to ruin my Logosian image as the ureasonable Logosian.
For more recent Logosians, an in-house 'manual' was verboten for the longest time. If you wanted a 'manual', you needed to go to third parties (I still have my BDAG manual; I can't believe it).
However, the early 'Help' facility in the software did offer a 'backdoor' to helping customers, Initially it was pretty thin. Sort of a text version of popups.
But over the years, it's become quite extensive ... advice, imagery, organization ... even a separate resource! And ... it's type 'Manual'!! How's that for 'times change'?!
However (why else, a post?).
'Finding' something in 'Help' is work. A great Help resource, but not a quick Help resource.
- You have to have 'foreknowledge' of the subjects, for it to jump to the subject. I don't have good foreknowledge at all.
- Or use the TOC and scan down, hoping to see the desired help. Not so helpful.
- Or use the 'Find' choice. Now this one is curious (see below)
- Or use the Inline Search choice. More curious.
Using the Find choice;
- First you need to pop the Help to the top. Find starts where you are (which is normally good)
- Then do your 'Find'. But .... oddly it doesn't 'find' headers. Only text. Well ok!
Using the Inline Search choice:
- This overcomes the 'Find' problems above.
- But, has the same 'sin' as mentioned today in another post. You can't immediately read the help advice (only the snippet). Clicking on a choice opens another Help resource instance (for me on another window, of course).
- And oddly, only SOME of the highlighted inline 'finds' offer popups, to avoid opening another instance (most don't do popups).
So. I admit, if I were the design chief-tess (heaven forbid), for a Help manual, I'd combine topics with 'find'. But they're probably just treating the Help function as a standard resource.
And there you go. We'll see where the next few years take us.
