Thanks for your comments, Jim. Bear in mind as I answer them that you are absolutely right; the user is _always_ right when he doesn't like something.

>We have a WHOLE screen at our disposal, yet we get a line or two about an exact particular thing and then a series of little buttons to see more about yet another particular subset of the starting! Why not simply use the scrollability of the window to put all of the realted information right there, where you can read it right away????

Unfortunately, usability studies have shown that most users don't scroll. If they don't see what they want first thing, that's it. They close the window and never come back. I don't know the answer to how to make both that kind of user and "your" kind of user happy, unfortunately. I think the best that can be done is to better anticipate why someone would want to bring up help at a particular point in the first place, and show her that information right away, instead of wasting time describing the blindingly obvious.

>Another thing is that damned modal window which pops up with various alternatives if a (supposedly) ambiguous request was entered.

Help authors like these, because (in WinHelp, which is all I have experience with) it lets the writer use A-Links instead of giving meaningful links to a collection of topics. I'm against these, root and branch and I feel your pain. :)

>The fact that it comes up at all really bugs me, but worse still is the fact that it won't 'remember' which you have just viewed

Alan Cooper calls "memory" the secret weapon of user interface design. How much more productive could we be if programs (or rather program designers) simply took the trouble to remember more about what we've done?

>Yet another thing is the the 'main Help Window' usually disappears when a selected item is presented. So, rather than being able to simply slide the pointer over to anywhere in that Window to activate it, I am forced to move the pointer to a very small (by comparison) area at the top of the presentation box to get the 'main' window redisplayed!

If you're talking about HTML help, that's the nature of the beast, I'm afraid. With WinHelp, it's not necessary, however. You can design any number of windows, and I think that presenting secondary information in secondary windows makes a lot of sense.

Again, thanks for your comments. I'll definitely bear them in mind in future work.