omo@mcnc.org (Julie E. Omohundro) (05/30/90)
We'd like to provide our users with online help with Unix. We'd like it to be user friendly enough for novices, but comprehensive enough for experienced users, and to allow access to, not only the material in the users manual, but also other material that we've developed inhouse. Before devoting our energies to developing an online help system ourselves, we decided to first check for existing software that might fit our needs. We're in the process of getting and installing the most up-to-date version of the help command from Berkeley. This sounds like what we want, but...we're working under a fiscal year deadline and don't want to give up searching prematurely. So: Anybody out there know of some help software we should check out?
lauther@janus.Berkeley.EDU (Ulrich Lauther) (05/30/90)
In article <6639@alvin.mcnc.org> omo@mcnc.org (Julie E. Omohundro) writes: > >We'd like to provide our users with online help with Unix. We'd like >it to be user friendly enough for novices, but comprehensive enough >for experienced users, and to allow access to, not only the material >in the users manual, but also other material that we've developed >inhouse. > I have found the help-program distributed with the MKS-Software (Korn-Shell and Unix-like commands for MSDOS) quite helpful, firstly because I have no man-pages on my small 286-based Xenix system, secondly, because the output is much more compact, but sufficient if you know what you are looking for, but just cannot remember all the nitty-gritty options. I include as an example the output of "help test": [start citation] test -- test for condition Usage: test expression Conditional expression consists of: -r file file is readable -w file file is writable -d file file is a directory -f file file is a regular file -x file [U] file is executable -c file [U] character special file -b file [U] block special file -p file [U] named pipe (fifo) file -u file [U] file is setuid -g file [U] file is setgid -k file file is sticky/system -s file file size > 0 -t [fd] fd (or 1) is terminal -z string string length is 0 -n string string length > 0 str1 = str2 strings are identical str1 != str2 strings are different string string is not empty n1 -eq n2 integers are equal n1 -ne n2 integers not equal n1 -gt n2 integer n1 > n2 n1 -ge n2 integer n1 >= n2 n1 -lt n2 integer n1 < n2 n1 -le n2 integer n1 <= n2 file1 -nt file2 file1 newer than file2 -L file [U] file is symbolic link file1 -ot file2 file1 older than file2 file1 -ef file2 [U] files have the same device and i-node number ! expression negation expression -a expression true if both expressions true expression -o expression true if at least one expression is true ( expression ) grouping expressions Result is exit status of command. [U] options are meaningful on UNIX only. [end citation] To use this under UNIX, I have written a simple shell script that extracts the relevant information. (I assume, to use the MKS stuff this way on the *same* machine I bought the MSDOS software for, does not violate the licence agreement). ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ulrich Lauther Internet: lauther@janus.berkeley.edu Siemens / UCB ph: +1 415 642 3338 fax: 642 2739