Re: The ultimate help system

[Steve & Patti Getzinger <steveandpatti wubs org>]

Tom,
  I have started implementing such "thoughts" into site design. I watched my
wife "navigate" through a search engine trying to find something and quickly
learned search engines are useless to most people unless they know exactly what
they are looking for and how it is catagorized (which I might add is NOT how
users catagorize). So in sites where a search is implemented I have implemented
her thought process to solving her problem. I am hoping it makes the sites more
user friendly. I am fairly strong with Web development and play with GTK+ as a
hobby learning as I go. Seems like just when I think I am starting to get the
hang of it I have to shift focus and loose track of what I was thinking.

  I find a couple of the largest problems I have is no answer and "read the
source". Something as simple (in perl) as creating an array of strings (or
images for that matter)is a nightmare with C. I know one day it will all pop in
me like perl did but in the interim ... I have been through all the tutorials
and have every book I know of on the subject of GTK+ plus a few on C. Reading
the source does no good at all if you do not understand what you are reading.
Is GTK+ just so young there is nothing available that really enlightens
someone. Something like "How do I tell the &*^%$ thing to move one dir up in
the tree?" You know cd..  :) Something that shows how to tie all of it
together.

A good example is I want to create a fileselection dialog. Ok so far so good we
know what we want to do. What is MODAL? Where do I find out what MODAL is? I
know what modal is but that starts the process. Now we move to the display of
files. G_DIR_SEPARATOR_S found it today on the Gnome site purely by accident.
Another great one for me personally is GList. from what I have read it can
contain any form of data so here we go. Can I put an icon next to a text label
for each listing? What I read says yes but only shows how to do it with
strings. Months will follow trying to figure this one out.

Support needs more people like Havoc. Ask a question and he responds with
something that works or at least is very close. So you go off and play a bit
and almost get it. Send an update to your progress and he says "do this". Now I
have a section of code that does exactly what I want it to do. Now I can really
start learning. Look at what I had vs. what works and find my errors. Getting
closer to understanding what is going on.

Well there are some of my comments :)

Steve

Tom Musgrove wrote:

> I have an interest...and comments,
>
> Tom M.
> TomM pentstar com