Monday, January 08, 2007

Matrex 1.1 plan

It is time to start to work on the version 1.1 of Matrex.
The main new features of Matrex 1.1 will be:
  • Context Help
  • Excel files (.xls) import.
  • Possibility to use bar series and line series in the same chart.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Context help

One of the features of the next version 1.1 will be the context help.
This means that pressing F1 in a window Matrex shows some help for that window.
This will be a winning feature for Matrex, because it reduces the time needed to learn how the system works.

The content of the help will come from the PDF document How to use Matrex.
The idea is to make a map of all the windows in Matrex and assign a piece of the document as an HTML page to each window.
Then refine the help text to make sense for each window and add links among the various help pages.

To maintain the help system and the PDF document updated in the next versions I will:
  • update the HTML pages of the help (change them, make new pages)
  • build the PDF document from the HTML pages using HTMLDOC. HTMLDOC is able to merge several HTML pages in one PDF document and is free.