[Qgis-community-team] Processing help

[Alexander Bruy]

Hi all,

recently an important topic was raised in QGIS-tr list [0] about Processing
documentation.

Paolo suggested next approach

2014-11-20 15:39 GMT+02:00 Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>:
> I'm suggesting to:
> * add a placeholder in main documentation (manual) where the documentation can be added
> * move what we have (very little, mostly templates, some SAGA documentation) there
> (except for the fully fledged grass manual, of course)
> * let the algs take the help content from the manual, or add a context help that
> opens the relevant page.
> In this way, there will be no alg documentation and main documentation, but the
> efforts can be united.

While I'm fully agree with moving algorithm help into main QGIS documentation
repository, I still unsure about putting it into User Guide. My main
concern is a
large number of algorithms in Processing (and it will be even larger in future)
which will lead to increasing size and page count of User Guide. Some time ago
we have in User Guide list of GRASS modules, but later after discussion we drop
it to make User Guide simpler and smaller. Maybe we should continue with
keeping it clean.

So I'm thinking about slightly different solution:
 * create new subfolder in documentation repo, e.g. processing_help
 * move all existing algorithm help in this folder and organize them
in sctuctured
   way: provider (SAGA, TauDEM, QGIS, etc) → algorithm group (raster anlysis,
   vector overlay, table tools, etc) → algorithms itself
 * use same template for each algorithm description: general info (some
   information about algorithm, how it works), inputs and outpus description
   including limitations, command line usage (?)

In this way we can keep User Guide relatively small and in same time have
documentation on Processing algorithms. Moreover, if necessary we can easily
embedd Processing docs into User Guide by adding several srings into main
RST document. So we can produce small User Guide and "full self-contained"
User Guide with all documentation.

I can move Processing docs into main QGIS documenation when final decision
will be taken.

Opinions?



[0] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-tr/2014-November/000494.html

-- 
Alexander Bruy