Re: spatial stuff detail

[John Siracusa <siracusa mindspring com>]

On 9/23/03 10:26 AM, Shaun McCance wrote:

> On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 07:58, Michele Campeotto wrote:
>> On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 14:24, Shaun McCance wrote:
>>> OS X doesn't have a central help system
>> 
>> Sure it does:
> 
> Allow me to clarify.  OS X has a central help *viewer*.  It also has a
> central location into which help file *can* be put for them to be picked
> up by the system.  But general application help is always bundled in the
> appdir, not in the central help location.

...and yet it appears in the "Help Viewer" application, which was my point.
The app ("DragThing") pictured is a drag-install and stores its help files
inside the application package.  Ditto for BBEdit and most other apps in
that list.

> When applications want to display their help files, they call the help
> viewer on the appropriate file in their appdir.  But the help viewer
> itself has no prior knowledge of these.  So you can't just open up the
> help viewer and browse or search all of the documentation for all of the
> applications on your system.

That's just what I did to create that screenshot.  Find an OS X machine and
try it for yourself.

-John