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Cream of the Crop 1
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Cream of the Crop 1.iso
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UTILITY
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RBHELP31.ARJ
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READ.ME
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Help: Version 3.1 3/15/91
This is an online help program combining features of a command line
interface, using only standard output, and an interactive browsing
facility using full screen item selection. An "apropos" facility
providing matches to 1-line item summaries, and cross referencing of
items are provided. The initial version of this program (without the
interactive browsing) was posted to usenet in March 1989. A help file
covering standard MSDOS commands up through 4.01 is included. The
help text may easily be modified, or complete new files created for
application-specific help.
I have substantially rewritten this program, adding a full screen
interactive help "browsing" facility, using just this program, or any
favourite pager which accepts standard input. If no arguments are
specified to HELP, the program opens a window with a sorted list of
commands. For each command selected on the list, the text is retrieved
and displayed (via PAGER if this is defined in the environment,
otherwise to standard output, after saving and clearing the screen).
The temporary file needed for the PAGER option can be placed in a RAM
disk by setting TMP or TMPDIR. The 1-line synopsis of each entry can
be viewed when in the interactive mode by pressing F2.
Help items can be cross-referenced, and the cross references for any
selected item in interactive mode may be viewed (recursively).
The index and apropos functions work are now sorted. As before, other
than in interactive mode, all output is to standard output.
The supplied helpfile has not changed in content, but cross reference
information has been added.
To make the program more versatile, the length of the index keyword
has been increased to 25, and the the synopsis field had been reduced
from 85 to 80 characters - this breaks old index files which MUST be
regenerated with this version.
Blurb from previous release:
The program HELP was written by Wolf Paul to serve as a concise online
help system for small unix machines where the full on-line manual
system would be too much of a drain on disc space. It was designed to
be a functional clone of the help program supplied with the MKS
TOOLKIT package. I have modified his source and added a few new
features:
- ability to print out the index of entries
- an "apropos" capability - display 1 line descriptions of all commands
appropriate to the keyword you specify
- ability to maintain the help text in several separate files, but use them
as a single file when retrieving help text (e.g. helpfile for MSDOS,
helpfile for 4DOS, helpfile for locally added utilities)
Richard Brittain 4/20/89
richard@calvin.ee.cornell.edu (internet)
These .ZOO files contains the following files:
HELPDOS.ZOO helpfile: file containing help for MS-DOS commands up to 4.01
HELPBIN.ZOO binary and documentation only