String freeze: Revised help page for Nodes module

Hi, O Govinda! Thanks for the patch! Here's some feedback.

I's great to split patches up into logical distinct pieces and you've done that well. You also figured out "diff" which can be intimidating for new people. So well done! :)

However:

1. What you should do is just change the text to however you'd like it, and then make the patch from that modified file; a patch file is basically, "I think Drupal should do this instead of that"; comments/suggestions/questions should be posted to the issue queue instead.

2. It's best if you can do:

cvs diff -up > patchfile.patch

from the "root" your Drupal CVS checkout. This will make it so one of the developers can do a simple command (patch -p0 < patchfile.patch) to import your changes and see what they look like. The patch as it stands now will prompt the tester to go and find the file to patch, because Drupal doesn't have a "node.module.new"

3. The links in the t() are broken. This is not immediately apparent, but what you need to do in addition to putting @placeholder in is throw in an array('@placeholder' => 'thingy') at the end. For example:

      $output .= '<p>'. t('For more information please read the configuration and customization handbook <a href="@system">System page</a>.', array('@system' => 'http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/system/')) .'</p>';

4. Regarding your comments themselves: No, we probably shouldn't have the link to search there since it's dependent on search module, so go ahead and remove it. And for the second, while I would like to explain this in rich detail, it would be overkill for a simple help page, so better to put that as a sub-page in the handbook or something under that section.

Marking code needs work just until those things are addressed.

@o: Seconding webchick on figuring out diff. I'm still working on it o_O.

Given the string freeze, I'm going to update all your UI text issues to 5.x-dev so they get looked at once the 5.0 release cycle is done, and don't get lost when people forget about the betas. Clear English makes a huge difference to many users, and also to people doing localization, who won't have to translate unusual grammar and colloquialisms.

RC1 is out, so this now gets pushed to 6.x-dev. Sorry. :\

@webchick: Whoops - sorry! It makes sense that the strings have to stay the same for the whole 5.x branch (so that translations don't have to be continually revised, I suppose). I should have thought of that earlier.

I'll go update all the issues I just made 5.x-dev to 6.x-dev, and not make this mistake again in the future!

Hey, no problem. :) Thanks for doing some house-cleaning!

Moving to documentation component.

Patch as webchick suggested (see #1 item 4).

I left out the link to "search posts", and also the other links, as they are repeated below under "Node administration pages". Perhaps in D7 we could have a general overhaul of the help pages, and integrate these links with the help text.

Thanks for moving forward with this! I very very much appreciate it...

A few notes, of course:

• we have recently been breaking the items in lists into separate t()'d strings, which is apparently less troublesome when translating. Any of the recent commits of help pages that have lists should provide an example, like the patch that was committed in http://drupal.org/node/175127. In one of those last comments on that issue, there is also a discussion about a convention for referencing text on other pages, as well, that may be helpful.
• Is the node module what lets you "search all the content on your site"?
• To be consistent with some of the other help pages, you may want to make some of the references like "content types" clickable, so that they lead to the page they reference.
• On "set norms for how posts are entered and displayed", that still makes me wonder what it does. But, so did the original "The configure settings tab has basic settings for content on your site."
• Technically, I guess it is the node module, rather than "the nodes module".

Please do not interpret any of these minor things as criticism; really, you're my new best friend for jumping in here.

- separated list items
- removed "search all content"
- fixed "node module"

The "content types" link is already mentioned in the link list below the text. I wouldn't mention it twice (but see my remark in #7).

@gaele: I took your patch in #9 and added some more info about publishing settings, revision moderation, etc. I certainly understand your comment in #9 about content types and permissions already being below in the link list, but we also mention them in-line in most of the other help texts so far. Maybe in D7 we can redo this somehow, as you say.

I guess this is about the only place where we can legitimately use the word "node" in help text, in fact, I think we need to mention it in here, since try as we might, it is an intrinsic Drupal concept.

Great, I committed this one. It gives much more action links to users and cleans up help on some UI which we don't have anymore. I also easier on the translators. Thanks!