I fire up Designer 8.5.1, start working on some LotusScript, put my cursor on a function, keyword or object method and hit F1. All I get is a sidebar telling me how to search help. Is that “broken as designed”?
Subject: I have yet to see this work in any R8.5.x…
- Help is essentially useless under R8.5.x, any variant. Your best course of action is to load help manually, using “Help → Help Contents”, then establish a set of “Search Scope” to fit your needs. For instance, I currently have four “Search Scope”:
XPages
LotusScript:
Java:
Designer Help: ← Even I have no idea why this one is here
Each one limits the results to items I’ve selected as relevant to that topic, by setting check boxes to include the bits of help I’m interested in. Search Scope is your friend, the only spiffy thing about “help”, and the simplest way to manage the gobs of useless chafe that the search bar will return.
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F1 context sensitivity, consistent presentation, user-controlled indexing, integration with the environment, and most user-friendliness have gone the way of the Dodo Bird. Just get used to those facts now and you will be significantly happier.
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Get used to terse, as well, particularly where the newer technologies are concerned. It would be shocking how little is present, except after seeing “help” at all I no longer find anything relating to it even remotely out of the ordinary.
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FT Search appears to work, so while one has no control over the indexing, at least boolean queries can limit hits. Still, Search Scope is simpler than typing " AND LotusScript" to limit hits to that language, if doing more than one or two searches.
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Alternatively, the help database is still present, but utterly lacking anything regarding XPages, or any new technologies in R85.x, that I’ve been able to tell. So one no choice, if employing said new technologies, but to use the “help” provided.
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If “help” were the only thing heinously bollixed in DDE I’d call it a win.
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As always, your mileage may vary.
Hope this helps…
Subject: Help database
The only way I have been able to get anything at all useful is to just open the designer help database from within the client. Very frustrating. IBM, can you hear us?
Subject: *I find the hover help in the new editor useful for Lotusscript stuff (which is mostly why I go to help)