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 <P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-top: 0.42cm; page-break-after: avoid"><FONT FACE="Sunsans Heavy"><FONT SIZE=4 STYLE="font-size: 16pt">Proposal
 for a new Help Agent</FONT></FONT></P>
 <P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-top: 0.42cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: demi-bold; page-break-after: avoid">
 <FONT FACE="sunsans heavy, SunSans-Heavy, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, Lucida Sans, Sans-Serif"><FONT SIZE=4>Version
 1, Lutz H&ouml;ger, 02/09/2001</FONT></FONT></P>
 <P><BR><BR>
 </P>
 <DIV ID="Table of Contents1">
 	<DIV ID="Table of Contents1_Head">
 		<P STYLE="margin-top: 0.42cm; font-weight: medium; page-break-after: avoid">
 		<FONT FACE="Sunsans Demi"><FONT SIZE=4>Table of Contents</FONT></FONT></P>
 	</DIV>
 	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#1.Preface|outline">Preface</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#2.Problem|outline">Problem</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#3.Solution|outline">Solution</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.Details|outline">Details</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.1.WhenshouldtheHelpAgentbetriggered?|outline">When
 	should the Help Agent be triggered?</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.2.Let'sgetvisual|outline">Let's
 	get visual</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.3.UsingtheHelpAgent|outline">Using
 	the Help Agent</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.4.Advancedfeatures|outline">Advanced
 	features</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.5.ConfiguringtheHelpAgent|outline">Configuring
 	the Help Agent</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#5.ImplementationSteps|outline">Implementation
 	Steps</A></FONT></P>
 	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#6.OpenIssues|outline">Open
 	Issues</A></FONT></P>
 </DIV>
 <H1><A NAME="1.Preface|outline"></A>Preface</H1>
 <P>This short proposal doesn't claim to completely cover all aspects
 of the subject, even though I'm trying to propose the feature as
 complete as possible.</P>
 <H1><A NAME="2.Problem|outline"></A>Problem</H1>
 <P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">When
 working with StarOffice / OpenOffice.org (SO / OO.o) there are
 various situations where the program 'decides' to act in a certain
 way that might not have been expected by the user. Some examples for
 this are: </FONT>
 </P>
 <UL STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm">
 	<LI><P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">the
 	'AutoCorrect' feature automatically completes a word the user has
 	just started to type</FONT></P>
 	<LI><P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">the
 	same feature automatically creates a bullet list from plain text
 	while typing (type '- test', press Enter)</FONT></P>
 	<LI><P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">the
 	'Print' dialog box is shown even though the user has clicked on the
 	'Print File Directly' symbol in the 'Function Bar' (because there
 	was a mismatch between the default system printer and the printer
 	stored in the document)</FONT></P>
 </UL>
 <P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">To
 simplify it: from a user's point of view in some situations a program
 behaves unpredictably. No matter how hard we try to avoid these
 cases, in certain situation the expectations of users simply are too
 different.</FONT></P>
 <H1><A NAME="3.Solution|outline"></A>Solution</H1>
 <P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">The
 first and very simple idea is to tell users what's happening, e.g.
 use some plain text explaining the current behavior. We tried that in
 SO 5.x, using the so called Help Agent. In the current SO / OO.o
 release (614) there is no such information any more. </FONT>
 </P>
 <P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">Due to
 the lack of this feature, we can now see the real benefit of this
 mechanism. It helps users in getting out of 'screen mysteries', it
 offers support when users actually need it. So this proposal is about
 the re-implementation of the Help Agent feature to be more elegant,
 more intelligent but also less annoying than formerly.</FONT></P>
 <H1><A NAME="4.Details|outline"></A>Details</H1>
 <H2><A NAME="4.1.WhenshouldtheHelpAgentbetriggered?|outline"></A>When
 should the Help Agent be triggered?</H2>
 <P>The most important feature of the Help Agent is to 'proactively'
 (I don't know any better word) offer support in certain situations.
 This distinguishes it from common help systems which offer help only
 if a user asks for it, e.g. by hitting the 'help' button. The Help
 Agent needs to detect if the user performs an action that may lead to
 confusion or that's generally difficult to understand in order to
 present helpful information to the user.</P>
 <P>The detection of these situations is a quite critical part of the
 Help Agent. The range of implementations for this goes from a static,
 pre-defined list (like in SO 5.x) to some artificial intelligence
 driven agent analyzing the user's behavior and thus detecting usage
 problems. The compromise between release driven reality and feature
 theory lies somewhere in-between.
 </P>
 <P>I think it's best to start with the simple list implementation and
 advance to something more sophisticated later. A list of situations
 that require user assistance already exists in SO 5.x and can be
 maintained based upon the feedback from our users, e.g. by evaluating
 the FAQ lists that are regularly generated by Sun's Support.
 </P>
 <H2><A NAME="4.2.Let'sgetvisual|outline"></A>Let's get visual</H2>
 <P>When designing the UI of the new Help Agent, we tried to follow
 the paradigm 'K.I.S.S.' (keep it short &amp; simple). SO 5.x users
 sometimes did complain about the old Help Agent. Very often the first
 thing that was done with it was to disable this feature completely,
 because it was rather irritating than helpful. That was caused by two
 aspects: The window showed up automatically but had to be closed
 again manually, and the content wasn't appropriate for the majority
 of our users - beginners.</P>
 <P>To change the content of the help system is one thing. It's safe
 to say that it will take some time to be accomplished and the whole
 process will probably span a couple of SO / OO.o releases. Fixing the
 usability issue should be possible soon, so let's have a look at a
 first UI design idea.
 </P>
 <P>Here's a mock-up screen shot of a typical Help Agent situation:
 The user adjusts some settings that have 'invisible side effects' -
 in this case the spell check for the selected languages only
 functions if the appropriate language has been installed, something
 users very often aren't aware of, if they are just 'playing around'
 with some character formatting settings.</P>
 <P ALIGN=CENTER><IMG SRC="offering.gif" NAME="Graphic1" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=384 HEIGHT=303 BORDER=0></P>
 <P>Due to the 'SO 5.x help content issue', we decided to initially
 display as few text as possible. This leads to the idea of just
 showing up an image button indicating that help is available.  The
 Help Agent gets triggered and shows up in the lower right corner of
 the current document window. The design of the image above is just a
 placeholder for some artwork that would still have to be created.</P>
 <P>The Help Agent window or indicator should appear on top of the
 current document window but underneath a potentially open dialog box
 that has got the focus. It shouldn't be possible to raise the
 document window's z-order above the Help Agent's one. The current
 focus should remain unchanged so that the user can continue his work
 without being interrupted. (This is exactly the behavior of the Help
 Agent window in SO 5.x.)</P>
 <P>Behind the scenes, the help ID of the control that triggered the
 Help Agent gets forwarded to the Help Agent in order to be available
 for later processing.</P>
 <H2><A NAME="4.3.UsingtheHelpAgent|outline"></A>Using the Help Agent</H2>
 <P>To address the complains about the old Help Agent's stickiness,
 the new Help Agent should disappear after a time-out of 30 seconds.
 If the user doesn't do anything but continue his normal work and
 ignores the Help Agent, the pop-up window simply disappears after
 this time-out. If another item triggers the Help Agent within this
 time-out, the countdown timer should be reset and the new help ID
 should be stored instead of the old one.</P>
 <P>If the user clicks on the Help Agent indicator within the time-out
 timeframe, the help system will be opened and the help related to the
 temporarily stored help ID will be displayed. Starting with SO 6.0 /
 OO.0, the help system is an own operating system task. In case this
 task is already running at the time the Help Agent is used (clicked),
 it simply gets the focus and displays the respective help topic. That
 way, only one help task can be open at the same time.</P>
 <H2><A NAME="4.4.Advancedfeatures|outline"></A>Advanced features</H2>
 <P>Turning the static list of Help Agent relevant help IDs into a
 'semi-static' list could be achieved by dropping items dynamically.
 Whenever the Help Agent detects that his help offer didn't succeed,
 i.e. the user didn't make use of it a couple of times (3? 5? 10?)
 within a certain time (e.g. 90 days), an item can be dropped from the
 list. That way the occurrences of the Help Agent can be minimized
 down to what an individual user actually needs.
 </P>
 <P>I'm not sure whether or not it is necessary to manually reset a
 list that has been modified this way to the factory default. But my
 guts tell me that there might be a number of people who want to have
 this feature.
 </P>
 <P>So far this is not 'rocket science'. A far more advanced feature
 would be to add new items to the list based on an analysis of the
 program's usage. This could come pretty close to an interactive
 tutor, detecting certain 'inefficiencies' in usage patterns and
 offering the respective shortcuts to the user. This feature itself
 would need a much more extensive description than this proposal is
 supposed to deliver. Maybe someone else wants to pick this up and
 follow upon it?</P>
 <P>Regardless whether or not the typical geek likes it: animations
 are one of those neat features that particularly beginners do like.
 As there is a quite contradictory discussion about this detail, I'll
 leave it open and name it just for the purpose of completeness.</P>
 <P>Something maybe more important to think about is the position of
 the Help Agent indicator. On one hand it brings a certain calmness to
 the user interface, if this window always shows up at the same
 position, on the other hand if this position should ever be occupied
 by something else (like a toolbar or a docked float), it could be
 desirable to open the window somewhere else. SO 5.x had a mechanism
 that tried to position the Help Agent's floating window intelligently
 so that it doesn't cover the currently used dialog box. Of course
 such a feature would be helpful for the new Help Agent's window, too.
 But as the new window should be much smaller than the old one, it
 might be something that can be done later.</P>
 <H2><A NAME="4.5.ConfiguringtheHelpAgent|outline"></A>Configuring the
 Help Agent</H2>
 <P>Even though the new Help Agent tries to be both - as visible as
 necessary and as invisible as possible - there's probably the
 requirement to configure at least some basic settings.
 </P>
 <UL STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm">
 	<LI><P>Advanced users might want to switch the feature completely
 	off; so this option should be offered. This implies that the default
 	should be 'on' ;-)</P>
 	<LI><P>The suggested default time-out of 30 seconds might be
 	something that users want to adjust, too. We should offer a scale
 	from 0 to 60 seconds in 5 second steps, so this can be combined with
 	the above configuration setting ('0 seconds' means 'feature is
 	deactivated'). Or should the two settings be independent from each
 	other?</P>
 	<LI><P>As soon as the Help Agent is able to 'forget' or 'learn'
 	about situations it should show up, there's probably some
 	requirement to reset a modified list to the factory default.
 	</P>
 	<LI><P>As mentioned above, the position of the Help Agent window
 	should later be configurable if it's not possible to make it evade
 	intelligently .</P>
 </UL>
 <H1><A NAME="5.ImplementationSteps|outline"></A>Implementation Steps</H1>
 <P>Driven by product release reality, I suggest the following three
 steps of implementation. However, if someone thinks this isn't
 appropriate, I would be happy to see an alternative.</P>
 <OL STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm">
 	<LI><P>The first implementation basically should include anything
 	described in the chapters &quot;When should...&quot;, &quot;Let's
 	get...&quot; and &quot;Using&quot;, plus the basic configuration
 	option of enabling/disabling the feature and justifying the
 	time-out.</P>
 	<LI><P>The addition of the feature &quot;dropping items from the
 	list&quot; and the possibility to reset the list should be the main
 	parts of step 2. In addition to this, the window positioning issue
 	(if at all there is such an issue) should be finalized.</P>
 	<LI><P>The third step could be a mid-term to long-term project,
 	defining and implementing the feature &quot;add new items to the
 	list&quot;, as this would probably affect other projects as well.</P>
 </OL>
 <H1><A NAME="6.OpenIssues|outline"></A>Open Issues</H1>
 <P>These are just a few open issues that would need to be resolved in
 order to achieve step 1 and step 2 of the implementation. Probably
 there are many more if one starts digging into the details, but I
 think these are the most obvious ones.</P>
 <UL STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm">
 	<LI><P>Artwork for the Help Agent indicator<BR>This should clearly
 	indicate 'click me' and 'there's something you might want to know'</P>
 	<LI><P>Further configuration details<BR>Are the configurable
 	settings sufficient or already too detailed? What are reasonable
 	default values to minimize the necessity of configuring this
 	feature?</P>
 	<LI><P>Window behavior<BR>What about stickiness, movability, focus
 	behavior?
 	</P>
 </UL>
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	<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-top: 0.42cm; page-break-after: avoid"><FONT FACE="Sunsans Heavy"><FONT SIZE=4 STYLE="font-size: 16pt">Proposal
	for a new Help Agent</FONT></FONT></P>
	<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-top: 0.42cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: demi-bold; page-break-after: avoid">
	<FONT FACE="sunsans heavy, SunSans-Heavy, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, Lucida Sans, Sans-Serif"><FONT SIZE=4>Version
	1, Lutz Höger, 02/09/2001</FONT></FONT></P>
	<P><BR><BR>
	</P>
	<DIV ID="Table of Contents1">
	<DIV ID="Table of Contents1_Head">
	<P STYLE="margin-top: 0.42cm; font-weight: medium; page-break-after: avoid">
	<FONT FACE="Sunsans Demi"><FONT SIZE=4>Table of Contents</FONT></FONT></P>
	</DIV>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#1.Preface\|outline">Preface</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#2.Problem\|outline">Problem</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#3.Solution\|outline">Solution</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.Details\|outline">Details</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.1.WhenshouldtheHelpAgentbetriggered?\|outline">When
	should the Help Agent be triggered?</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.2.Let'sgetvisual\|outline">Let's
	get visual</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.3.UsingtheHelpAgent\|outline">Using
	the Help Agent</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.4.Advancedfeatures\|outline">Advanced
	features</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#4.5.ConfiguringtheHelpAgent\|outline">Configuring
	the Help Agent</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#5.ImplementationSteps\|outline">Implementation
	Steps</A></FONT></P>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="SunSans-Demi"><A HREF="#6.OpenIssues\|outline">Open
	Issues</A></FONT></P>
	</DIV>
	<H1><A NAME="1.Preface\|outline"></A>Preface</H1>
	<P>This short proposal doesn't claim to completely cover all aspects
	of the subject, even though I'm trying to propose the feature as
	complete as possible.</P>
	<H1><A NAME="2.Problem\|outline"></A>Problem</H1>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">When
	working with StarOffice / OpenOffice.org (SO / OO.o) there are
	various situations where the program 'decides' to act in a certain
	way that might not have been expected by the user. Some examples for
	this are: </FONT>
	</P>
	<UL STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm">
	<LI><P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">the
	'AutoCorrect' feature automatically completes a word the user has
	just started to type</FONT></P>
	<LI><P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">the
	same feature automatically creates a bullet list from plain text
	while typing (type '- test', press Enter)</FONT></P>
	<LI><P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">the
	'Print' dialog box is shown even though the user has clicked on the
	'Print File Directly' symbol in the 'Function Bar' (because there
	was a mismatch between the default system printer and the printer
	stored in the document)</FONT></P>
	</UL>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">To
	simplify it: from a user's point of view in some situations a program
	behaves unpredictably. No matter how hard we try to avoid these
	cases, in certain situation the expectations of users simply are too
	different.</FONT></P>
	<H1><A NAME="3.Solution\|outline"></A>Solution</H1>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">The
	first and very simple idea is to tell users what's happening, e.g.
	use some plain text explaining the current behavior. We tried that in
	SO 5.x, using the so called Help Agent. In the current SO / OO.o
	release (614) there is no such information any more. </FONT>
	</P>
	<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2cm"><FONT FACE="Sunserif Regular">Due to
	the lack of this feature, we can now see the real benefit of this
	mechanism. It helps users in getting out of 'screen mysteries', it
	offers support when users actually need it. So this proposal is about
	the re-implementation of the Help Agent feature to be more elegant,
	more intelligent but also less annoying than formerly.</FONT></P>
	<H1><A NAME="4.Details\|outline"></A>Details</H1>
	<H2><A NAME="4.1.WhenshouldtheHelpAgentbetriggered?\|outline"></A>When
	should the Help Agent be triggered?</H2>
	<P>The most important feature of the Help Agent is to 'proactively'
	(I don't know any better word) offer support in certain situations.
	This distinguishes it from common help systems which offer help only
	if a user asks for it, e.g. by hitting the 'help' button. The Help
	Agent needs to detect if the user performs an action that may lead to
	confusion or that's generally difficult to understand in order to
	present helpful information to the user.</P>
	<P>The detection of these situations is a quite critical part of the
	Help Agent. The range of implementations for this goes from a static,
	pre-defined list (like in SO 5.x) to some artificial intelligence
	driven agent analyzing the user's behavior and thus detecting usage
	problems. The compromise between release driven reality and feature
	theory lies somewhere in-between.
	</P>
	<P>I think it's best to start with the simple list implementation and
	advance to something more sophisticated later. A list of situations
	that require user assistance already exists in SO 5.x and can be
	maintained based upon the feedback from our users, e.g. by evaluating
	the FAQ lists that are regularly generated by Sun's Support.
	</P>
	<H2><A NAME="4.2.Let'sgetvisual\|outline"></A>Let's get visual</H2>
	<P>When designing the UI of the new Help Agent, we tried to follow
	the paradigm 'K.I.S.S.' (keep it short & simple). SO 5.x users
	sometimes did complain about the old Help Agent. Very often the first
	thing that was done with it was to disable this feature completely,
	because it was rather irritating than helpful. That was caused by two
	aspects: The window showed up automatically but had to be closed
	again manually, and the content wasn't appropriate for the majority
	of our users - beginners.</P>
	<P>To change the content of the help system is one thing. It's safe
	to say that it will take some time to be accomplished and the whole
	process will probably span a couple of SO / OO.o releases. Fixing the
	usability issue should be possible soon, so let's have a look at a
	first UI design idea.
	</P>
	<P>Here's a mock-up screen shot of a typical Help Agent situation:
	The user adjusts some settings that have 'invisible side effects' -
	in this case the spell check for the selected languages only
	functions if the appropriate language has been installed, something
	users very often aren't aware of, if they are just 'playing around'
	with some character formatting settings.</P>
	<P ALIGN=CENTER><IMG SRC="offering.gif" NAME="Graphic1" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=384 HEIGHT=303 BORDER=0></P>
	<P>Due to the 'SO 5.x help content issue', we decided to initially
	display as few text as possible. This leads to the idea of just
	showing up an image button indicating that help is available. The
	Help Agent gets triggered and shows up in the lower right corner of
	the current document window. The design of the image above is just a
	placeholder for some artwork that would still have to be created.</P>
	<P>The Help Agent window or indicator should appear on top of the
	current document window but underneath a potentially open dialog box
	that has got the focus. It shouldn't be possible to raise the
	document window's z-order above the Help Agent's one. The current
	focus should remain unchanged so that the user can continue his work
	without being interrupted. (This is exactly the behavior of the Help
	Agent window in SO 5.x.)</P>
	<P>Behind the scenes, the help ID of the control that triggered the
	Help Agent gets forwarded to the Help Agent in order to be available
	for later processing.</P>
	<H2><A NAME="4.3.UsingtheHelpAgent\|outline"></A>Using the Help Agent</H2>
	<P>To address the complains about the old Help Agent's stickiness,
	the new Help Agent should disappear after a time-out of 30 seconds.
	If the user doesn't do anything but continue his normal work and
	ignores the Help Agent, the pop-up window simply disappears after
	this time-out. If another item triggers the Help Agent within this
	time-out, the countdown timer should be reset and the new help ID
	should be stored instead of the old one.</P>
	<P>If the user clicks on the Help Agent indicator within the time-out
	timeframe, the help system will be opened and the help related to the
	temporarily stored help ID will be displayed. Starting with SO 6.0 /
	OO.0, the help system is an own operating system task. In case this
	task is already running at the time the Help Agent is used (clicked),
	it simply gets the focus and displays the respective help topic. That
	way, only one help task can be open at the same time.</P>
	<H2><A NAME="4.4.Advancedfeatures\|outline"></A>Advanced features</H2>
	<P>Turning the static list of Help Agent relevant help IDs into a
	'semi-static' list could be achieved by dropping items dynamically.
	Whenever the Help Agent detects that his help offer didn't succeed,
	i.e. the user didn't make use of it a couple of times (3? 5? 10?)
	within a certain time (e.g. 90 days), an item can be dropped from the
	list. That way the occurrences of the Help Agent can be minimized
	down to what an individual user actually needs.
	</P>
	<P>I'm not sure whether or not it is necessary to manually reset a
	list that has been modified this way to the factory default. But my
	guts tell me that there might be a number of people who want to have
	this feature.
	</P>
	<P>So far this is not 'rocket science'. A far more advanced feature
	would be to add new items to the list based on an analysis of the
	program's usage. This could come pretty close to an interactive
	tutor, detecting certain 'inefficiencies' in usage patterns and
	offering the respective shortcuts to the user. This feature itself
	would need a much more extensive description than this proposal is
	supposed to deliver. Maybe someone else wants to pick this up and
	follow upon it?</P>
	<P>Regardless whether or not the typical geek likes it: animations
	are one of those neat features that particularly beginners do like.
	As there is a quite contradictory discussion about this detail, I'll
	leave it open and name it just for the purpose of completeness.</P>
	<P>Something maybe more important to think about is the position of
	the Help Agent indicator. On one hand it brings a certain calmness to
	the user interface, if this window always shows up at the same
	position, on the other hand if this position should ever be occupied
	by something else (like a toolbar or a docked float), it could be
	desirable to open the window somewhere else. SO 5.x had a mechanism
	that tried to position the Help Agent's floating window intelligently
	so that it doesn't cover the currently used dialog box. Of course
	such a feature would be helpful for the new Help Agent's window, too.
	But as the new window should be much smaller than the old one, it
	might be something that can be done later.</P>
	<H2><A NAME="4.5.ConfiguringtheHelpAgent\|outline"></A>Configuring the
	Help Agent</H2>
	<P>Even though the new Help Agent tries to be both - as visible as
	necessary and as invisible as possible - there's probably the
	requirement to configure at least some basic settings.
	</P>
	<UL STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm">
	<LI><P>Advanced users might want to switch the feature completely
	off; so this option should be offered. This implies that the default
	should be 'on' ;-)</P>
	<LI><P>The suggested default time-out of 30 seconds might be
	something that users want to adjust, too. We should offer a scale
	from 0 to 60 seconds in 5 second steps, so this can be combined with
	the above configuration setting ('0 seconds' means 'feature is
	deactivated'). Or should the two settings be independent from each
	other?</P>
	<LI><P>As soon as the Help Agent is able to 'forget' or 'learn'
	about situations it should show up, there's probably some
	requirement to reset a modified list to the factory default.
	</P>
	<LI><P>As mentioned above, the position of the Help Agent window
	should later be configurable if it's not possible to make it evade
	intelligently .</P>
	</UL>
	<H1><A NAME="5.ImplementationSteps\|outline"></A>Implementation Steps</H1>
	<P>Driven by product release reality, I suggest the following three
	steps of implementation. However, if someone thinks this isn't
	appropriate, I would be happy to see an alternative.</P>
	<OL STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm">
	<LI><P>The first implementation basically should include anything
	described in the chapters "When should...", "Let's
	get..." and "Using", plus the basic configuration
	option of enabling/disabling the feature and justifying the
	time-out.</P>
	<LI><P>The addition of the feature "dropping items from the
	list" and the possibility to reset the list should be the main
	parts of step 2. In addition to this, the window positioning issue
	(if at all there is such an issue) should be finalized.</P>
	<LI><P>The third step could be a mid-term to long-term project,
	defining and implementing the feature "add new items to the
	list", as this would probably affect other projects as well.</P>
	</OL>
	<H1><A NAME="6.OpenIssues\|outline"></A>Open Issues</H1>
	<P>These are just a few open issues that would need to be resolved in
	order to achieve step 1 and step 2 of the implementation. Probably
	there are many more if one starts digging into the details, but I
	think these are the most obvious ones.</P>
	<UL STYLE="margin-left: 0.5cm">
	<LI><P>Artwork for the Help Agent indicator<BR>This should clearly
	indicate 'click me' and 'there's something you might want to know'</P>
	<LI><P>Further configuration details<BR>Are the configurable
	settings sufficient or already too detailed? What are reasonable
	default values to minimize the necessity of configuring this
	feature?</P>
	<LI><P>Window behavior<BR>What about stickiness, movability, focus
	behavior?
	</P>
	</UL>
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