[alt.hypertext] Are there any help systems out there?

gillett@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Walter E. Gillett) (04/04/91)

Hi, Folks!
    I'm building a large X-based application and would like to incorporate
a fancy help system.  I'd like it to display a manual and allow the user
to navigate via hot text (hypertext) and indexes.  Does anyone know of a
system that does this?  I'd prefer it to be X-based, but I can certainly
wrap a window around a non-X-based version if that's all that's available.

						Thanks Much!
							-Joe Shapiro (NOT Walter)

				-Steve

tlwells@lynn.austin.ibm.com (Tracy Wells) (04/06/91)

In article <14630@life.ai.mit.edu> gillett@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Walter E. Gillett) writes:
>I'd like it to display a manual and allow the user
>to navigate via hot text (hypertext) and indexes.  Does anyone know of a
>system that does this?
>					-Joe Shapiro (NOT Walter)
>
>			-Steve
Have you seen InfoExplorer which is shipped with IBM's RISC System/6000?
It's an on-line help package of sorts.  All of the documentation available
for the system is packaged in InfoExplorer, and it supports bookmarks, 
notes, keyword searches (some boolean search capability), etc.

-- 
Tracy L. Wells
internal:	tlwells@lynn.austin.ibm.com
external:	@cs.utexas.edu:ibmchs!auschs!lynn.austin.ibm.com!tlwells
My opinions are my own, not necessarily IBM's!

pd@x.co.uk (Paul Davey) (04/09/91)

We have a hypertext help system called X.deskhelp.

X.Deskhelp uses ascii files and divides books (files) into pages which
can be navigated between via, 

Next/Previous page buttons, 
Embedded hypertext links,
Topic (keyword type) search 
Customisable menus
Text messages sent from (any number of) applications 
(allows for context sensitive help when F1 key is pressed.)

X based, Motif 1.0 or 1.1 and already licenced to oems who are not
using it with X.desktop. (X.deskhelp allows even more functionality
when used with X.desktop).
 
It uses ascii files so that any plain text file such as a formatted
manual entry can be displayed in the help window. Index pages can be
written to provide hypertext links to other files when selected with
the mouse.

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