Feature: Help Manager (WIP) - [merged]

[benloh]

In GitLab by @daveseah on Jul 24, 2022, 23:30

Merges dev-sri/next-gui-slothelper -> dev-next-gui

WHAT'S NEW

The Help Manager provides a centralized way to define help string for various features of the UI. There are three parts to help:

• the label for input fields
• instructions for the input field
• description of a GEMSCRIPT feature and its methods

These are available as strings dictionaries defined in YAML files in app/help. The main module is app/help/codex; searching for import * as HELP from 'app/help/confex' will show you all the existing uses of this module. Currently we have this string support in place:

• [ ] keyword help - in slot editor
• [ ] keyword argument help - in slot editor
• [ ] feature method arguments help - in slot editor
• [ ] propType method arguments help - in slot editor

This merge request provides help based on keyword and keyword/method argument type in the GUI. For help on features and rollover hints, this will require additional work post-merge by the GUI and feature implementor.

• [ ] feature description
• [ ] feature method help
• [ ] propType method help

See Sri for help with acessing/adding strings for your GUI.

INSTALLATION

1. Please make sure you are running the current minimum version of node of v14.18.1. Type node --version and compare to .nvmrc. If you change node versions, you will have to do a full npm ci; npm run boostrap; npm run build cycle again.
2. Please npm run bootstrap to ensure the yaml-loader webpack plugin is installed!!!

NOTE - the coverage is not yet perfect, but having the guts of the system in place will make it possible to continue refinement of the overall system.

EDITABLE FILES

• app/help/codex-keywords - descriptive text and syntax for the keyword, currently displayed in the SlotEditor
• app/help/codex-types - descriptive text for arguments in a keyword statement, currently displayed in the SlotEditor
• app/help/codex-features - descriptive text for feature methods (WIP) for some kind of UI
• app/help/codex-gsargs - gsArgs prompts used in symbol-interpreter, keyed by name of method. not all methods have an entry in this dict for technical reasons.

TECHNICAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS

• The class-validation-token now supports the gsArg property to replace gsType. It creates the gsName and gsType symbol properties from it, which makes gsName available to the GUI to properly label keyword and method arguments.
• There are some new types: {noncode} for comments and whitespace typing
• The block token for ifExpr now emits a new symbol property ui_action that can be detected and used to do some kind of followup when the GSymbolToken is selected. The routing is a bit unclear, but the intent is to be able to click the token to insert a block as needed.

[benloh]

In GitLab by @daveseah on Jul 25, 2022, 12:27

added 1 commit

• ebb57e56 - next-gui-slothelper: add codex-gsargs to improve prompting in slot editor

Compare with previous version

[benloh]

In GitLab by @daveseah on Jul 25, 2022, 12:41

marked this merge request as ready

[benloh]

Very cool! Tested adding help for _directive and that seemed to work. I guess we should discuss how codex-features works?

[benloh]

mentioned in commit 359dcf4d2006a80e0a448b25c8a29aed485dd486