[chimerax-users] ToolInstance context menu displaying help

[Greg Couch]

As ChimeraX matures, we are really hoping that you make your tool 
deliverable through the ChimeraX Toolshed that is accessible via the 
Tools menu's "More Tools..." option.  Those tool bundles should be 
semantically versioned releases and reasonably self contained.  The 
github version should be for development and may or may not need a 
ChimeraX daily build to work.  Making releases is more work, but will 
benefit users a lot.

     -- Greg

On 3/27/2020 10:43 AM, Tom Goddard wrote:
> Hi Tony,
>
>   Seems like the simplest solution would if we made the help command 
> handle http/https urls so I added that, in tonight's ChimeraX builds. 
> So in our ToolInstance class you can just define an attribute help = 
> "https://github.com/..." so the context menu Help button on your tool 
> will show your web site docs.
>
> Tom
>
>
>> On Mar 26, 2020, at 11:01 PM, Anthony James Schaefer 
>> <tony.schaefer at uga.edu <mailto:tony.schaefer at uga.edu>> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> can tools' "Help" option in the context menu be changed to use 
>> `ToolInstance.display_help` instead of running the `help` command? 
>> I'd like to keep most of my documentation on GitHub. The `help` 
>> command cannot open URLs, so I thought I'd overwrite my tools' 
>> `display_help` methods to use `open` instead. However, I discovered 
>> this method isn't used anywhere.
>>
>> I've tried changing `_show_context_menu` in chimerax.ui.gui (around 
>> line 2087) to `help_action.triggered.connect(ti.display_help)`. It 
>> seems to behave the same for all built-in tools.
>>
>> I understand there might be reasons to not do this (/e.g./users might 
>> not be able to connect to the internet). I'd like to keep stuff on 
>> GitHub because I can make a page on a GitHub wiki page faster than an 
>> HTML doc. Regardless of how tools' help pages get shown, I'd like to 
>> have examples of what my bundle can do on the GitHub wiki. To that 
>> end, my GitHub wiki could serve a dual purpose: a showcase and 
>> documentation.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Tony
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