[vdr] FRQ: VDR core support for online help

[Christian Wieninger]

Hi,

today many TV equipment offers online help, even my remote does ;)
VDR currently only gives help by manuals or WIKI, but this is far away 
every time you need it, i.e. if you whatch TV.
So I was wondering if it would be interesting to add online help for VDR 
with the following requirements:

- a dedicated key should give help in any situations (-> kHelp)
- help may be available per OSD item, or - if not present - per OSD menu
   (e.g. some setup values could give an extra explanation)
- help may be available for all player controls
   (e.g. I'll never keep in mind the keys for the dvd-plugin ;) )
- the implementation should also work for plugins

What do you (especially Klaus) think about an online help?

I've added a quick and dirty patch, that adds the basics for an online 
help. With the patch the implemenation of an online help works like this:

To add help to an OSD item, simply replace for example

Add(new cMenuEditItem(tr("an osd item"), &data.value));

with

cOsdItem* item = new cMenuEditItem(tr("an osd item"), &data.value);
Add(item);
item->SetOnlineHelp(tr("Help for item"));

To add help for an OSD menu add the following line to the contructor:

SetOnlineHelp(tr("Help for this menu"));

The same for an object derived from cControl.

Whenever the user presses the 'Help' key he gets a simple text menu with 
the online help.

I've already added online help to epgsearch's setup previously, but I 
think it would be better if there was core support in VDR for this and a 
common implementation.

The patch really needs some refinement (especially the part in vdr.c), 
but it should only serve as a starting point for a discussion.

BR,

Christian




-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: vdr-1.5.6-onlinehelp.diff
Type: text/x-patch
Size: 6803 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.linuxtv.org/pipermail/vdr/attachments/20070812/ce456621/attachment.bin