[13870] in Athena Bugs
sun4 7.7T: help in splus not helpful
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (alexp@MIT.EDU)
Thu Sep 21 17:23:52 1995
From: alexp@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995 17:23:26 -0400
To: Carla Fermann <carla@MIT.EDU>, bugs@MIT.EDU
Cc: alexp@MIT.EDU
Hi Carla,
Your Splus help system bug report got to me- it's actually bogus, but
ironically, the syntax for invoking help on Splus is quite arcane. In
fact, the syntax for everything in Splus is arcane. They really should
go to pull down menus....anyway: the general idea in Splus is that all
commands require an ending set of parentheses- in some cases, you put
other stuff inside the parentheses- thus, a first guess at getting help
is to try help() - this actually works, and gives you some "help about
help". The other useful thing to know is that there is a whole GUI-driven
help system, started by typing help.start() (when the GUI window comes up,
you can actually click on things...). To turn it off when you are done,
do help.off(). You also use a form like ?<keyword>, where <keyword> is
an Splus keyword. I wouldn't have known any of this if I didn't have the
manual handy- do you guys have a set?
Alex
