for XENIX

tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com (Nhan Tran) (02/22/91)

    Xenix help command is pretty bad.  Help page is terse and doesn't
follow man page style at all.  Anyway, I want to add additional help/man
pages for commands not exist on Xenix like where, less, .... I know the
help directory is /usr/lib/help  but help seems to check with a list of
available commands before display the help file from /usr/lib/help.

    Does anyone know how to do this?

    Perhaps, I just write a man script to verify the existence of a help
file in /usr/lib/help and use more/less to display it. 

Nhan Tran

bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion) (02/22/91)

In article <4615@peora.sdc.ccur.com> tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com (Nhan Tran) writes:
>
>    Xenix help command is pretty bad.  Help page is terse and doesn't
>follow man page style at all.  Anyway, I want to add additional help/man
>pages for commands not exist on Xenix like where, less, .... I know the
>help directory is /usr/lib/help  but help seems to check with a list of
>available commands before display the help file from /usr/lib/help.
>

Help is available in the run-time Xenix in lieu of the man command which
requires man sources and nroff and it's friends.  It is not to replace man,
or anything.  It does what it is supposed to.

Help, as documented in the manual, is for RCSS and Xenix command help.
It's terse as it doens't need flags to display more than one command with
the same name, or any of the other bells and whistles.  It just displays a
plain text file.  Dont blame it for being terse when it doesn't need to say
any more.

>    Does anyone know how to do this?

>    Perhaps, I just write a man script to verify the existence of a help
>file in /usr/lib/help and use more/less to display it. 

Why don't you just write them in the style of the help command an use this.

Just look at any help file for format.

In reality just start the help command file with a dash and the name of the
command.  help  for foo would be like this

# this is the help file for foo(1)
-foo
Help for foo doesn't exist.

Then type    help foo     and you will get

foo:
Help for foo doesn't exist.

Help uses more to display it's text. The only thing you have to do make the
help file displayable is make it readable and have the first ucommented
line start with -<command.name>. Don't go to anymore work than you have to.

-- 
Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill
                      : bill@bilver.UUCP