Org HELP Organisation

Eritheyl

So, I know this has been asked for many, maaany times over the past forever, but I thought it might be best to open a full thread to more directly address options/opinions and hopefully garner some support.

At present, our [C|G|O|whatever]HELP arrangement is pretty basic compared to equivalents elsewhere. Yes, it works as-is, but it could be made so much better! Even if this isn't touched Soon™, I hope pray that maybe, just maybe it could become a thing, perhaps as part of the potential shift from guilds to factions!

HELP INDEX FOR THE MINSTRELS GUILD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advancement     Combat          Influence       Magics          Oddjobs
Aideship        Composition     Joining         Maxims          Poi
Aspirants       Credits         Jossers         Mentors         Properties
Barkers         Extracredit     Leadership      Merryminstrels  Trades
Carousers       Guildhall       Liquidriftcov   Minorgames      Veils
Classflex       Huntingcov      Madvancecov     Minstrelscov

(See GHELP <scroll> to read the contents of that scroll.)

So, here is the outlay that we have now. I'll be altering this as my example for the two displays below. Alphabetical columns, no muss and no fuss. Unfortunately, also no organisation outside of this. We can do better!

SUGGESTION ONE:

This is a more outwardly simple option that I'm fond of. Allow help scrolls to be tagged with a group or subject, which will consolidate them into separated blocks. Ungrouped scrolls can then be collected near the bottom. I have no idea what hellish amounts of work would go into making this possible, but I think it looks pretty okay!

HELP INDEX FOR THE MINSTRELS GUILD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advancement        Basics             Internal          (etc.)
- Aspirants        - Combat           - Aideship
- Barkers          - Composition      - Joining
- Carousers        - Guildhall
- Jossers          - Magics
- Veils

Merryminstrels      Poi               Trades

(See GHELP <scroll> to read the contents of that scroll.)

Just a quick example.

SUGGESTION TWO:

Allow files to become nested, denoting this as well as keeping everything alphabetically sound. GHELP INDEX (which presently just does the same as GHELP with no args) would then bring up the full list, if ever there was a need to see it. Again, not familiar with the brainpower that would go into it, but this is my personal favourite option so far.

HELP INDEX FOR THE MINSTRELS GUILD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advancement*     Credits        
Aideship         Extracredit  
Classflex        (etc.)
Combat*            
Composition      

(See GHELP <scroll> to read the contents of that scroll, or to expand a nested category [*].)

(then)

HELP INDEX FOR THE MINSTRELS GUILD (ADVANCEMENT)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aspirants           Carousers            Veils
Barkers             Jossers

This option does a lot for shrinking the expansive list, and keeping things easy to find, without making it too crazy.

SUGGESTION THREE:

The big kahuna. Other games have a fully-customisable readout, with blocks and borders and arrangements and all kinds of things! I imagine this is just done in a standard-ish text editor, though I could be entirely wrong. I know a lot of people that would appreciate this and use it for good things, but I also understand that it could be "too much" for some. I'm not particularly for or against it either way, but it's an option that some enjoy.

Anyways, that's all from me on this. Thoughts are welcomed, since as previously stated others have been requesting this sort of thing weeeell before I dropped this off. Also, a word from Ye Olde Gods would be really great if for any reason this will absolutely not ever ever be a thing!

Enyalida

The way that your third suggestion works is pretty simple: Already in Lusternia, *HELP INDEX is itself a separate *HELP file, we're just not given the editing privs. If we could edit it, we'd then be able to make our own fancy looking indexes that would default to *HELP with *HELP INDEX becoming the output we have now, showing all files.

I personally like the folders approach. 

Ieptix

Enyalida said:

The way that your third suggestion works is pretty simple: Already in Lusternia, *HELP INDEX is itself a separate *HELP file, we're just not given the editing privs. If we could edit it, we'd then be able to make our own fancy looking indexes that would default to *HELP with *HELP INDEX becoming the output we have now, showing all files.

Negative. The help indexes for orgs are dynamically generated in code.

Updates to the orghelp are something we can do at some point, but they're not a high priority (likely at least subsequent to whatever work we do with the guild system).

Luce

Ieptix said:

Enyalida said:

The way that your third suggestion works is pretty simple: Already in Lusternia, *HELP INDEX is itself a separate *HELP file, we're just not given the editing privs. If we could edit it, we'd then be able to make our own fancy looking indexes that would default to *HELP with *HELP INDEX becoming the output we have now, showing all files.

Negative. The help indexes for orgs are dynamically generated in code.

Updates to the orghelp are something we can do at some point, but they're not a high priority (likely at least subsequent to whatever work we do with the guild system).

You'd (presumably) be doing a lot of work to the structure of the helpfiles while working on guild system stuff though, this might be able to be reviewed concurrently, mightn't it?

Ieptix

The orghelp system is orthogonal to guild organizations, and in fact all orgs use the same help file system.

Eritheyl

Edit: AAAND NA-NA-NINJA'D. Previous comment is now irrelevant.

Still, though, would it help if we cross our fingers and toes and pray virtuously in your name? Evennn iiif (gasp) the guild system isn't reworked, I would really hope this idea persists and is given a nudge in the far future. I need to organise. All the things

Also the real reason for my comment is just to voice the fact that I love the update to your signature, @Ieptix.

Enyalida

I mean, that's how some of the other IREs do it. There still is the dynamically produced index, but just inputting CHELP (instead of CHELP INDEX) defaults to a help file that works exactly the same as all the rest.