Molly and I were talking about helpfiles recently, and I got this idea - though I'm not sure how feasible it would be given 4D's code.
Would it be possible to re-arrange the helpfiles into different categories, like on the main "help" page. Eg, typing help shows several categories - (movement, communication, objects, information, etc ...)
So if there's a folder called /help where the helpfiles are stored, there could be subfolders, such as:
/help/movement
/help/communication
etc, and the respective helpfiles placed there.
So typing "help" would list the categories (or rather, list the current folders in the /help folder) in a nice formatted list.
Typing "help <category>" would list help files in the respective folder, eg help movement will list all the help files in /help/movement.
Typing "help <topic>" will scan through all folders and find helpfiles with the same keyword.
Typing "help <category> <topic>" will scan through the respective category instead - so maybe "help spells fortify" will show entries on fortify body and fortify mind, and not show the entry on fortify.
Typing "help 'blahblah'" (in quotations) will try to search for the help file with the exact keyword.
The hedit command could be modified to include in the respective category (or create new ones), so new helpfiles can be created on the fly and put in the respective folder.
I'm not sure whether this is feasible, or whether a lot of effort will be needed in doing this - I would think the most amount of effort would be to rearrange the current helpfiles into the categories. I don't think the helpfiles would need to be edited to show what "category" they're in, since a check could be done by looking what folder the helpfile is in, and then saying <folder name> is the category....
What do coders think of this idea?
