[Thinkpad] Way OT - User Hints

With the status of software patents still up in the air,
I'd like to offer some ideas I've had, so that somebody
can argue later that those ideas have prior art.
Or, more likely, since they are MY ideas, that they are
"obvious".

USER HINTS

How many times have we gone through a process, sweating hard
for a solution, then months or years later face the same
problem and either: 1) not remember the solution; or 2)
not remember that we solved it?

I therefore suggest USER HINTS, implemented at the OS level.
Every dialogue would have a USER HINT button, or a HINT button,
or a virtual button (visibility toggled by a hotkey combo).

HINTS would be editable by the user, collected by the OS and
stored in one location which would be backed up automatically
(separate subject).

For example: In Acrobat Reader, you often want to print out
two-sided documents. But the mechanics can vary with the printer.
I'd like to add this HINT to the Print Menu:

"Two-sided portrait printing with HP LJ II:
print even pages reversed; then uncheck the reversed box,
reload paper without rotating and print odd pages."

HINTS would be easily restorable on a global or single dialogue
basis, and would also be viewable and editable by external apps,
perhaps on the model of a collapsible outline.

An alternative implementation would be to make Help files
easily editable by the users, and to make sure that every dialogue
was Help-able. I'm not sure I like this so much, because it
complicates the backup/restore procedure.

The next iteration might be for software providers to detect
hardware / setup peculiarities and customize additions to the
HINTS files of their users. They would only be able to add to
the HINTS files, not overwrite them.

HINTS would also need to be implemented somehow at the level
of installation of software, and of installation of the OS
itself. Greater ease in OS slipstreaming would go hand-in-hand
with the idea of HINTS.

Recipes from this list could be made available in HINT form.
The HINT files could even contain .reg and/or .bat files and
the HINT interface would have a System Prompt / Command Line.

For instance, one HINT from this list might attach to a 600E
Control Panel > System > General dialogue. The HINT might
tell which 600E models can take 256 meg RAM pieces, which kinds
of pieces, etc.

I agree that the Internet contains more information, but it is
less focussed. I also know about electronic post-it notes
but this goes beyond.

-- 
happy
Jonathan Berry and Erika http://www.islandnet.com/~jberry/fun.htm
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