aarons%cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) (02/16/89)
James House: >Does anyone out there know of document browsing systems for Sun Unix? I >am interested in supporting a large set of documentation on-line.... Have you ever seen the Sussex University Poplog online documentation system, based on the Poplog editor, VED? It works either with a window manager, or an ordinary VDU. You can define several different categories of documentation (we have TEACH, HELP, REF, DOC for a start). A file in any category can include cross references to any of the others, e.g. see TEACH * MAIL, REF * SYSTEM The general format for a cross reference is <type> * <name> There are commands to move the cursor on to the next cross reference, and back to the last one. Once there, a key sequence (e.g. <ESC> h) will get the referred to document. A user-tailorable list of directories is associated with each documentation type, and they are searched in order for a file with the given name. Different categories can share directories (e.g. all the TEACH directories can be attached to the end of the HELP search list). The cross-reference can be followed by a search string to identify a location within the file, if found See REF * SYSIO/syscreate All of this uses the editor, VED. When you follow up a cross reference the old file remains in the editor, so that you an easily get back to your previous context. There are also tools for building sub-headings and tables of contents within a file, and for going from the table of contents to a particular portion of the file. This mechanism makes it very easy to build hierarchical menu systems. But you can also build tangled networks, or a collection of interlocking sub-networks. Users can tailor this in many ways, including (a) adding new cross-reference categories (b) adding new directories to the search list associated with each category. (c) adding new commands - the editor is programmable. (d) defining or re-defining key sequences, etc. Poplog, with its editor, runs on sun-2, sun-3, sun-4, sun386i, and other machines. The above mechanism is used for organising the many hundreds of online documentation files and can also be used for accessing the program libraries (Prolog, Lisp, Pop-11, ML). I hope this helps. Aaron Sloman, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, Univ of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, England ARPANET : aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs%nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk@relay.cs.net JANET aarons@cogs.sussex.ac.uk BITNET: aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs@uk.ac or aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs%ukacrl.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu UUCP: ...mcvax!ukc!cogs!aarons or aarons@cogs.uucp IN CASE OF DIFFICULTY use "syma" instead of "cogs"