[
Date Prev][
Date Next][
Thread Prev][
Thread Next][
Date Index][
Thread Index]
[
List Home]
[aperi-dev] Re: Online help and the new GUI
|
I am moving this very interesting discussion
to aperi-dev. I doubt the color coded commentary will come through that
remailer.
My comments:
Yes, I agree with Bill. Report 'designers'
are much fewer and further between than report 'readers'. The big question
here is how much of the schema to document for the benefit of report designers.
The books that Bill indicates are the BIRT bibles, but they are commercial
properties. I don't think you will find references to them on the Eclipse
web page, so its probably a foul to reference them in the open source product
documentation (true or false?). The online help that comes with the report
designer should be the help for that perspective.
All that is a slightly different question
than whether we should document the columns for any given report. Certainly
for any given report the help for that report should indicate which columns
are present and which can be filtered. For the reports we provide there
should be some documentation. Obviously, for user developed ad hoc reports
its up to report developer. How does an ad hoc report developer add help
for their report?
Dave Wolfe/Portland/IBM
(dwolfe@xxxxxxxxxx)
TL: 775-3376 Office: 503-578-3376 Personal: 503-329-3960
GUI Technical Lead, Aperi Open Source Storage Management
http://www.eclipse.org/aperi
http://www.ibm.com
If all of your problems look like nails you should invest
in a good hammer - Unknown
Bill Warren/San Jose/IBM
01/17/2007 07:02 PM
|
To
| Chris King/Chicago/IBM
|
cc
| Dave Wolfe/Portland/IBM@IBMUS, Eric
N Azares/Raleigh/IBM, Ophelia Yip/San Jose/IBM
|
Subject
| Re: Online help and the new GUILink |
|
Chris,
As a point of discussion, I think the
users in the two reporting perspectives are going to "wearing very
different hats," and have very different feelings about their help
needs --
- For the Designer perspective:
- The user would not normally be
generating and viewing report results, of our Aperi standard reports. They
may be looking at the BIRT implementation of a report. They will
have a, more or less, "programmer" attitude -- looking
at the coding of the _javascript_ expressions, and such Yes,
'report designer' are few and far between and they are pretty specialized
folk.
- The Aperi data columns they are going
to want explained will be those that appear in our BIRT "data sets,"
which will generally be a superset of those that appear in our reports.
The user will also be looking at the SQL queries we are using, and
will want access to the underlying database schema column descriptions,
including descriptions of the new view DB objects that Prasenjit will be
delivering.
I haven't done much
digging, but, so far, I don't have a good feeling about ways to provide
such information interactively while the Designer user is looking at a
"data set" definition
- For our Viewer perspective:
- For the five reports we deliver in the
0.3 release, we should be able to use the content of the legacy help, as
you describe
- I want to make sure it is clear that,
in the Viewer perspective, there is no BIRT-based UI implementation, and
hence no BIRT-provided help, of any kind. The Viewer uses the BIRT
APIs to generate the HTML. The Viewer then feeds that HTML directly
to a standard Eclipse SWT browser widget
These
comments are just to provide some more background. Another source
of background info, that may be of some value, is a couple of books that
have recently been published on BIRT. We will, no doubt, be referring
Designer users to these books as a base for their learning about the Designer
--
- BIRT:
A Field Guide to Reporting, whose info can be seen at these two places:
- Field Guide to BIRT, Volume II:
Understanding and Extending the BIRT Framework
|
|
These books can be found by doing a
search on "BIRT" at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.
Bill
Aperi Open Source Development
IBM Tivoli, San Jose, CA (408)284-5199 (t/l 953)
Ophelia Yip/San Jose/IBM
01/17/2007 06:35 PM
|
To
| Chris King/Chicago/IBM
|
cc
| Bill Warren/San Jose/IBM@IBMUS, Dave
Wolfe/Portland/IBM@IBMUS
|
Subject
| Re: Online help and the new GUILink |
|
Hi Chris,
The summary you provided below was good.
I will provide my two cents in blue
text below.
Best Regards,
Ophelia Yip
Phone: (408)284-5226, T/L: 953-5226
Aperi Development
IBM Tivoli Storage Business Unit, San Jose, CA
Chris King/Chicago/IBM
01/17/2007 12:56 PM
|
To
| Dave Wolfe/Portland/IBM@IBMUS, Ophelia
Yip/San Jose/IBM@IBMUS, Bill Warren/San Jose/IBM@IBMUS
|
cc
|
|
Subject
| Online help and the new GUI |
|
Dave, Ophelia, Bill,
I just want to get some thoughts down
while the GUI demo meeting is still fresh in my mind. I might be wrong
in my understanding of some of the components for 0.3, so please feel free
to correct me. Once I get further along with the plan for the 0.3 help
and documentation, I will post to aperi-dev for any further feedback.
Documentation
--------------------
I think we need some type of document
that provides an overview of how to use the RCP framework and BIRT report
designer. We can either have a document separate from what we already have
for Aperi, or integrate this information into the existing user's guide
or install instructions. What are your thoughts about having such a document?
What to do: create a new document
that describes the new framework or add to one of the existing Aperi documents.
Maybe we can provide a high
level summary of what changes have been made to the Aperi GUI in the form
of a release note and this summary can include:
- The entire legacy
GUI is now encapsulated in RCP framework, etc and it's major differences,
i.e. the bullets you listed below
- The Report Viewer
and Report Designer are available and highlight on its capabilities.
Online Help
--------------------
RCP Framework
It doesn't appear that the RCP framework
requires an extensive online help system at this point (or maybe not a
separate online help system at all). The biggest visible differences I
see at this point between the GUI of the legacy product and the product
as it appears in the RCP framework are:
Regarding
Help info for the new Login Dialog, I am leaning towards adding a way to
display Help from within the dialog such as adding a "Help" button
or "?" icon on the left-hand corner and provide the same information
in the User's Guide. The problem with having it in the JavaHelp
system is the user cannot really access the JavaHelp until after they are
logged in.
Major changes of the login
are:
- it now stores past connection info,
- allows user to delete invalid connection
- has a separate field for the port number.
- the New Connection menu item has moved
in the File menu
To
keep the Help consistent, I can move the New Connection back to where it
used to be. Otherwise, we also need to modify the current Help to
say that New Connection resides within the File menu in the RCP gui instead
of the Connection menu
- the Look and Feel option has been removed
from the Preferences menu
Need
to modify the current Help to address that the Look and Feel only applies
for the legacy GUI
- the fact the RCP framework exists
Not
sure if we need to mention this in the JavaHelp if we already stated it
in the release note but maybe info about how to switch from the Classic
GUI perspective to the Report perspective will be helpful.
- "Print" has been
removed from both the Menu and the Toolbar
- "Select Chart Engine"
under Preferences has been removed
What to do: I think for the 0.3
release of the product we can document these differences in the existing
legacy JavaHelp system. Do either of you see a problem with documenting
the RCP framework in the existing JavaHelp system? Then when it comes time
to move from JavaHelp to an Eclipse-based system, we can migrate all the
help at once without worrying about juggling help systems in different
formats.
BIRT Reports component
While the actual BIRT designer has it's
own Eclipse-based help, the Aperi reports that users will be able to generate
within it are not included in that help. While those reports are documented
in the legacy JavaHelp system, it makes sense to also document those reports
using the same Eclipse help engine as used by BIRT.
What to do: Create an eclipse-based
help system (or add to BIRT's existing help) that describes the Aperi reports
that appear in the BIRT report component.. As an alternative, we can either
document these reports within a standard HTML/text file, or refer people
to the existing JavaHelp system.
I incline to the approach
of adding to BIRT's existing help if possible and if this can be made happen
within the current scheduled timeframe. I believe it'll be easier
for the user to look up information with a one-stop approach.
_________________
Chris King
IBM Information Development - TPC, Aperi
512.687.5166 / Tie line: 273.5547
chriskng@xxxxxxxxxx
TPC InfoCenter: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v4r1/index.jsp
TPC website: http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/software/center/index.html
Aperi: http://www.eclipse.org/aperi/index.php