Currently, it’s possible (at least in Windows) to drag across parts or all of the debug window output to highlight text, which may then be copied to the clipboard for pasting into another document.
Any Help Screens output by a plug-in should operate that way also. Currently, you cannot drag and highlight text in a help screen, making it very difficult to save that text somewhere for later reference.
Dave
Same on Linux (tested on Ubuntu).
I would probably make the suggestion a bit less forceful and say “recommended” rather than “should” as there may be instances where it is not practical to do so. As a general recommendation I’d agree that this is a good idea.
For complex plug-ins that require extensive “Help” I’d also recommend that the Help screens are also made available as a separate Help file. In most cases that could be a plain text file (with the same file name as the plug-in and a .TXT extension) that is bundled with the .NY in a .ZIP archive.
I would see both of these suggestions as stop-gap measures as there really needs to be a better way of presenting Help screens.
…there really needs to be a better way of presenting Help screens.
That would certainly help my current problem. I’ve written a complex plug-in which uses a script to generate a stereo track. When the plug-in is run, the script to run is chosen by a drop-down list. There are six script variables which have no fixed meaning – each script can use them however it wishes. There is another drop-down list which allows the user to decide whether to display a help screen describing the use of each of the six variables, or to generate the audio (plus a couple of other choices.) It is unfortunate that the user can’t display the help, enter values for the user variables, and then generate the audio, all in the same invocation of the plug-in. As it stands, the user must run the plug-in once to see the help, write it down, and run the plug-in again to enter the desired values.