Copyright ã1992 by Scott Hess.  All Rights Reserved.

Help

Stuart's online manual is quite simple to use.  Point and click at whatever interests you in the browser to the left, and text will be brought up in the text area here on the right.  It's perhaps not as flashy as the NeXTSTEP3.0 online help system, but it does have one big advantage - it runs under NeXTSTEP2.0.

The elements in the browser are sections of the online manual.  Those that contain a small arrow on the left hand side can be opened by clicking on the section.  The arrow will then point downward and connect to a list of subsections that the section contains.  Sections can even be nested within other sections.

When the user clicks on a new section, currently open sections are closed to reduce the total number of sections visible to reasonable levels.  Sections may be locked open by double-clicking on them, at which point the arrow will turn dark grey.  When locked, sections do not close when another section is selected.  Note that if a locked section's parent section is not locked, the parent may still be closed, in which case the locked section will also be hidden from view.  To unlock a section, double-click on it again, and the arrow will turn back to white.

The `Expand All' button causes all sections to be locked open.  This is useful for initial browsing.  `Contract All' unlocks all sections and closes all but the selected one.

The Find field can be used to search for text in the manual, not only in the currently visible section, but also in other sections.  The standard Find menu command keys work as expected.  Furthermore, characters typed while the Manual panel is key are entered into the Find field, whether the Find field contains a cursor or not.  Also, the search is always case insensitive.