Getting to Closer to a Software Help Language Untangling complexities of the LibreOffice Help
Channel: FOSDEM
Date: 10/02/2019

by Olivier Hallot

At: FOSDEM 2019
https://video.fosdem.org/2019/UD2.119/toolthedocs.webm


LibreOffice has currently an large set of help pages which are hard to maintain and to edit. On the other hand the XML language used was designed for a broader purpose and is not used in its full capacity. The lecture presents simplifications of the help XML and the design of specific XML objects to describe the user interface and to connect the help pages closer to the dialogs of the application. Software user interfaces has menus, toolbars, panes, dialogs, mouse clicks ad even voice to enable complex tasks for the user. Because of the cost of the screen real-estate, elements of interaction are concise either in textual form or in pictorial form (icons). The need of Help pages are necessary to give more details on the elements functionalities. But since the set of UI elements is limited in size, the elements of the Help pages should also
be limited, and the corresponding help page element to UI element should be connected. 

The lecture presents simplifications of the help XML and the design of specific XML objects to describe the user interface, to connect the help pages closer to the dialogs of the application and produce Help contents in a faster way, making easier to upgrade and to address softwares translations processes. 

Room: UD2.119
Scheduled start: 2019-02-02 12:30:00+01