Re: A better "Fred Commands" help window

[cfry@MIT.EDU (Christopher Fry)]

> In article <9208260012.AA10718@MIT.EDU> cfry@MIT.EDU (Christopher Fry) writes:
> > As the originator of the Fred Commands window, I'd like to state
> > that Yost's formatting is a definate improvement on mine. [Thanks David!]
> 
> Thank you.  I was wondering if anyone cared.
> It's nice to hear praise from the person
> whose work you hope you've approved upon.
By encouraging each other, we evolve great systems!
> And I agree with your suggestions.
> 
> One more thing: The list should appear twice.
> The first time the commands should be grouped by type of function
> The second time they should be sorted by key sequence as they are now.
Well as long as we're evolving the design here, Its certainly nice to have a semantic
grouping. Such groupings could be made explicit via heirarchical menus.
Here's a first pass at a hierarchical help menu for MCL
help
  Common Lisp
     arithmetic
     arrays
     files
     object system    
     ...
  Editor
     by category
        deleting
        moving cursor
        
        ...
     by function name
     by key binding
  Forieng Function Inteface
  Inspector
  Mac OS
  Stepper
  Window System
     menus
     ...
     windows 
> > A nice extension would be to put a sentence of documentation in a 3rd
> > column to the right.  For instance, the meaning of "ed-yank" might not
> > be obvious to the new user but a short description of it would clear up
> > misunderstandings.
> 
> Would you volunteer to do this?  I'm new to Fred and emacs.
Being new is an ADVANTAGE! We want this to be so obvious that new users can
understand it. I wouldn't mind helping but...
I was kinda hoping Apple would realize this was important and pick up the ball.
Fred help should fit into the context of other kinds of help in MCL.