Links to readthedocs documentation

[stannam]

For each module specification window, add a button "About [functionality]..." that links to the relevant readthedocs documentation page.

For example, the movement module may have an 'About movement...' button, as shown below. It should prompt the web browser to show this page.

Cf. see the PCT codebase

• generating the URL to the help page: URL should be different whether frozen or not.
• after generating URL, simply webbrowser.open(url) to open the page.

[stannam]

• To avoid making the button too big, the button label is 'help' instead of 'about [module name]' (the user already knows which module they're working with, so the module name could be redundant)

• A 'help' button is in all specification windows under the Sign panel. Are there other places that need 'help?'

• The order of buttons is OS-dependent: 'help' is left on Mac and right on Windows.

• I know this issue was discussed before, but forcing one order can be an option. OK-Cancel-Other is the standard in Windows, while Other-Cancel-OK is how MacOS shows. img source

[kvesik]

@stannam FYI the "Help" button in the X-slot Information dialog leads to https://slp-aa.readthedocs.io/en/latest/timing.html.html (404 due to extra ".html")

[stannam]

Thanks for catching this @kvesik . It is fixed now :)

[stannam]

d51f3ed17cb9aaef04db6ec43a1f8fa519082e14 adds "Help" menu to the menu bar and "Help" button to the preference dialog.

The 'Help' menu should contain 'Help', 'About', and 'Show version number.'

• 'Help>Help' opens the default readthedocs page.
• 'Help>About' leads to the readme part of the GitHub repo. See below for the exception in macOS.
• 'Help>Show version number' prompts a messagebox showing either a version number like 1.2.3 (if frozen) or git commit hash (if running from the source code).

On macOS, 'About' is NOT under 'help' but under the first menu next to . MacOS soft-forces "About [Program name]" menu to always be under a specific location ('soft-force' because there seems to be a way to override this). E.g., "About Finder" is under the Finder menu, and so is all the major applications.

Do we want to force the same behaviour as Windows (i.e., 'About' under the 'Help' menu)?

[kvesik]

@kchall not sure whether you've seen Stanley's question above so I've tagged you just in case :)

[kchall]

@kvesik Woops, no, I hadn't, so thank you!

@stannam Thanks for checking -- no, we can keep the "About" menu under the [Program name] menu on a Mac, so that people know where to look for it.