laplant@caert2.engr.wisc.edu (dave laplant) (06/06/89)
We are looking for an online help system for Unix to complement the man pages. The system should be aimed at the user who wants to learn just enough to solve his/her (basic) problem. The system should be hierarchical, extensible, and easily understood. The text should make no attempt to explain everything, but just cover one way to solve the most common problems (including examples) and refer the user to the man pages for more information. If no such system is available, we will write one. But first we'd like to know if someone else has already done this. respond to laplant@engr.wisc.edu -dave laplant (laplant@engr.wisc.edu) Computer Aided Engneering Center University of Wisconsin-Madison
larry@macom1.UUCP (Larry Taborek) (06/07/89)
From article <11@caert2.engr.wisc.edu.WISC.EDU>, by laplant@caert2.engr.wisc.edu (dave laplant): > > > We are looking for an online help system for Unix to complement the man > pages. The system should be aimed at the user who wants to learn just > enough to solve his/her (basic) problem. The system should be hierarchical, > extensible, and easily understood. The text should make no attempt to > explain everything, but just cover one way to solve the most common > problems (including examples) and refer the user to the man pages for > more information. > > If no such system is available, we will write one. But first we'd like > to know if someone else has already done this. > Dave, Although we don't have one here, if I was going to attack the sort of help center you describe I would attack it like this: Make a shell script that displays a menu giving the topics help is available on. The shell script could be tiered, allowing a user to select a major topic of help on the first screen (say dbms), then a second screen program displays a menu on that topic, and the user may select the next subtopic that they wish help on (say SQL), which would call yet another screen program to display a menu and so on until you reach a topic menu that is at the lowest level. Selections off the lowest level menu would call a manual page on that topic. "But I don't like/want a manual page!" you say. But the man command is really just a "nroff -man <file> | more" command. The man nroff macros are in a file called "an" located in some subdirectory under lib (I think mabey /usr/lib/macros). I would copy the an file to "help", and also change perhaps macro defining the title in the new "help" macro file. Next I would grab a unformatted manual page, strip the text, and use that as the template to put the new manual page text in. Next I would connect the "nroff -mhelp <appropriate file> | more" command to the lowest tier of the menu/help system, so when they punch the right button, they get your manual pages. There is several advantages to this. 1). You can make the format some what different by putting in more explination and examples. It does not have to be "like" a manual page. 2). You can make the menus very easily. Each menu can be a different program. This allows you to make the "main_topic" menu available from the shell, and the "dbms_topic" (a submenu of main_topic) available to the dbms users in the dbms package. 3). Most of your time would be spent building the text for the manual pages. This means that you will spend more time entering informational help and not coding to allow for informational help. 4). Users using this system can quickly traverse several menus to quickly focus in on help for a problem. 5). Its pretty easy and quick to do. Hope this helps... -- Larry Taborek ..!uunet!grebyn!macom1!larry Centel Federal Systems larry@macom1.UUCP 11400 Commerce Park Drive Reston, VA 22091-1506 703-758-7000
billb@stech.UUCP (Bill Burton) (06/08/89)
In article <4851@macom1.UUCP> larry@macom1.UUCP (Larry Taborek) writes: >From article <11@caert2.engr.wisc.edu.WISC.EDU>, by laplant@caert2.engr.wisc.edu (dave laplant): >> >> We are looking for an online help system for Unix to complement the man >> pages. The system should be aimed at the user who wants to learn just >> enough to solve his/her (basic) problem. The system should be hierarchical, >> extensible, and easily understood. A VAX/VMS style help utility has been posted on a number of occaisions. You should ask for this. -Bill -- William D. Burton, Jr. @ American Academy of Arts and Sciences Cambridge, Mass. Voice: +1-617-576-5023 UUCP: ...!{husc6|allegra}!stech!billb Internet: billb%stech.uucp@husc6.harvard.edu