Talk:Help strings

Just to say that the actual implementation is more HTML rendering although not the same in the mouse over than in the pop-up window

 
 HTML <br/> or <p>  are necessary to create a newline and <b> gives bold
 
 
<b>Like with short answer questions</b> gives bold 

i.e. Like with short answer questions  in the pop-up but not in the mouse over. 

List with * does not work. <br/> In this case, the first * Unordered Lists are easy to do: ** start every line with a star *** more stars means deeper levels

What will be the final standards?

Pierre Pichet 00:05, 29 April 2010 (UTC) as of --Pierre Pichet 16:31, 30 April 2010 (UTC) HTML <br/> or <p> are filtered and newline can be obtained by <div>...</div> , a <b> gives bold only on help window.

From tracker MDL-21695 :

David Mudrak added a comment - 01/May/10 12:55 AM Pierre - yes, help.php does not properly handle format yet.

I tend to call the future "standard" help format as MINIWIKI format. The proposed behaviour is following:

• if the help string contains any

  tag, then it is considered legacy string copied from the HTML and will be rendered as plain HTML (so all copied help files will work)

• if there is no

  tag used, then the help string is expected to be in MINIWIKI format.

Where MINIWIKI can be defined as:

• no

  tags are allowed

• linebreaks are put automatically, using newline characters. The behaviour of newlines is the most significant difference between HTML and MINIWIKI
• unordered and ordered lists are supported using * and # as the first character on the line. One level only, no support for nesting in help
• all other common HTML tags are rendered as expected - etc.

This will allow us to use HTML where needed, but we will keep English master copies as simple as possible.

stringname_help vs stringname_desc

I am not at clear what purpose is served by stringname_desc. Can someone provide a clear example, please? --Joseph Rézeau 17:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

These _desc strings are used as descriptions for administration settings. In 1.x, for administration string called 'foobar', the description was usually stored in 'configfoobar'. That sucks because the strings were not kept together in the translation tool (that sorts strings by stringid). So it was decided to use _desc suffix. In 2.0, the description of 'foobar' setting is stored in 'foobar_desc'. To make it even more complicated, in some rare cases, it makes sense to have the same string used as a description (in administartion UI) and as a help (in normal UI). Then, the description is saved in normal _help string. --David Mudrak 07:13, 6 January 2011 (UTC)