[chimerax-users] ToolInstance context menu displaying help

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Tony,

  Mostly putting your ChimeraX plugin on the ChimeraX Toolshed (free app store) https://cxtoolshed.rbvi.ucsf.edu <https://cxtoolshed.rbvi.ucsf.edu/> makes it super simple for anyone using ChimeraX to install, just using menu Tools / More Tools... and pressing an install button.

  For plugins distributed on the Toolshed our plan is that the documentation in most cases would be included in the plugin in html format.  The advantage of this is that as you make new versions of your plugin with new features the user who has your old version sees the documentation for that old version.  This avoids confusion where the online documentation is not correct for all the old versions of your plugin.   We have not yet been including documentation with the Toolshed plugins we create so it is rather untested right now (I think the ViewDockX plugin is the only one doing that), so your solution of having the Help menu entry go to your web site is fine.

	Tom

> On Mar 27, 2020, at 11:08 AM, Greg Couch <gregc at cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
> 
> 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/ <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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