Help context abstraction is a technique to simplify the handling of help context IDs and help search expressions in the UI code, by abstracting them to “help keys.”
Help context abstraction provides the following benefits:
- Development teams are free to associate new help contexts with UI controls, without necessitating that corresponding help context IDs or help search expressions exist.
- Documentation teams are free to define UA help contexts, modify help context IDs, and control the mapping from abstract help contexts to concrete help context IDs, without necessitating any change in the UI code.
- Documentation teams are free to define and modify context-specific help search expressions, and the mapping from abstract help contexts to help search expressions, without necessitating any change in the UI code.
Tip: Help search expressions include human-readable text, so they must be
externalized for localization.
This separation of responsibilities enables the project team to provide higher quality, and more precisely targeted, dynamic context-sensitive help.
Together, the DTP help-helper and a context-sensitive help UA plug-in provide an abstraction layer, which enables dynamic context-sensitive help, with a practical and easily maintained implementation in the UI code.
