Help button for dialogs

[Edgar]

Over the years we have discussed adding an "Help" button to some of the dialogues - most recently the Effects dialogs. At first I lobbied for a Windows-centric "round blue button with a white question mark" in the top right-hand corner of the window. I even floated a proof of concept patch which referenced the local hard drive-based manual if available and otherwise use the online manual. Having gotten no traction with that lead balloon I thought I would explore Martyn's suggestion on – devel. To try this at home change one line in srceffectsEffect.cpp at (or near) line number 569:

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long buttons = eOkButton;

becomes:

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long buttons = eHelpButton | eOkButton;

Recompile, start Audacity, exercise any Effect with a dialog (e.g. the Noise generator).

help.png (23.94 KiB) Viewed 2788 times

Obviously, there is no handler for the Help button but it should not be too hard to write and I would be glad to help out.

[steve]

Obviously, there is no handler for the Help button but it should not be too hard to write and I would be glad to help out.

I'll take you up on that offer Edgar

Yesterday I added a Help button to the Nyquist Prompt effect. I think this would be a good place to start as it does not interfere with other effects. If/when it is agreed that it is working correctly, the same method could be rolled out for other built-in effects.

If we don't want a help button for all built-in effects (but perhaps we do), a help button can be added to individual effects like this:

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Index: src/effects/BassTreble.cpp
===================================================================
--- src/effects/BassTreble.cpp	(revision 12324)
+++ src/effects/BassTreble.cpp	(working copy)
@@ -281,7 +281,7 @@
 
 BassTrebleDialog::BassTrebleDialog(EffectBassTreble *effect,
                                  wxWindow * parent):
-   EffectDialog(parent, _("Bass and Treble"), PROCESS_EFFECT),
+   EffectDialog(parent, _("Bass and Treble"), PROCESS_EFFECT, wxDEFAULT_DIALOG_STYLE, eHelpButton), // stf
    mEffect(effect)
 {
    Init();

Here is where I've got to so far with adding a help button to the Nyquist Prompt:

HelpButton-01a.patch

(2.75 KiB) Downloaded 120 times

[steve]

OK, got a bit further.
Does this work on Windows?

HelpButton-01b.patch

(4.74 KiB) Downloaded 121 times

[steve]

And a bit more:

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void BassTrebleDialog::OnHelp(wxCommandEvent & /* event */)
{
   AudacityProject * pProj = GetActiveProject();
   wxString HelpMode = pProj->mHelpPref;
   
   wxString page = FileNames::HtmlHelpDir() + wxT("man/bass_and_treble.html");
   if ((wxFileExists(page)) && (HelpMode == wxT("Local"))) {
      page = wxT("file://") + page;
   } else {
      page = wxT("http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/bass_and_treble.html");
   }
   OpenInDefaultBrowser(page);
}

Would it be better to move this to ErrorDialog.cpp along with void ShowHelpDialog ?

[steve]

And a patch for adding Help buttons to "Nyquist Prompt" and "Bass & Treble".

HelpButton-02a.patch

(5.35 KiB) Downloaded 119 times

[Edgar]

I skipped right to 02a; grabbed a fresh copy of SVN HEAD, before patching compiled both Release and Unicode Release (to ensure no recent commit broke the compile); applied the patch and compiled both Release and Unicode Release successfully.

Would it be better to move this to ErrorDialog.cpp along with void ShowHelpDialog ?

I don't think so. Each help button (dialog) will require a custom (non-translated) HTML string.

I am going to switch to private email for the fiddly bits…

[Edgar]

Steve,

We had a major storm here and the power was out for a long time. I still have no internet at home and only an iPad with a poor cell contection for the web but no e-mail access. I'm not ignoring y'all <grin>!