124882 - Update logic for contextual help

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Help Documentation, defect)

Description

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

Notes from alecf about the way we ask for a help topic from the UI:

[needs to be fixed because,] by determining the codepath based on the format of
a string you're inventing a syntax, which unnecessarily complicates your code.
Instead, you should let the syntax of javascript choose your codepath for you.
Consider:

function openHelpTopic(topic) {
  topWindow.displayTopic(topic);
}

function openHelpUrl(uri) {
  var URI = normalizeURI(uri);
  topWindow.displayTopic(URI.topic);
}

you'll notice that there are no branches in the above code, and neither function
needs to unpack/parse the contents of the strings that are passed in.

In your solution, the looks more or less like:
function openHelp(uri) {
  var URI = normalizeuri(uri); // break out uri into topic and url, note that
"uri" may actually be the topic
  topWidnow.displayTopic(URI.topic);
}

What I'm saying basically is that you want to make one function that takes two
kinds of parameters, when in fact the caller should always KNOW what kind of
parameter they are passing in... meaning the caller already knows which codepath
should be followed - so there is no need to obscure this knowledge by encoding
it in a string.

Comment 1

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

Accepting and moving out to just beyond the Big Release. I'd like to get context
help working again right away and then make this change as soon as I can after that.

Comment 2

[Peter Wilson]

This ain't necessarily so. When I'm wearing my UA consultant's hat ( a big MS 
Access Accounting and Manufaturing package) I have code which references up to 
80 different help files. Being able to specify only the topic will not work.
I suppose that, in this case, each call to openHelp could be prefixed  be a call 
to setHelpFileURI()- then you have to be careful to also restore it after each 
call. That makes three calls instead of one. 

Comment 3

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

This was taken care of with a previous check-in. Logic for context-sensitive
help is as it should be. Marking FIXED.

Comment 4

[Brant Gurganus]

v