NAME

phelp (peh’0.1m’-´help) − on-line help for a project

SYNOPSIS

phelp [−P projectname] [topic [subtopic ... ]]

DESCRIPTION

Phelp provides information about a project. There are two modes of operation:

Interactive

After the phelp command is typed, it will respond with ‘???’ indicating that it is ready for a command. The following commands are recognized:

      Command     Response

a topic namePrint help information on topic.
indexDisplay list of topics available at this level.
helpDisplay help on how to use phelp.
?Display this command summary.
qExit from phelp.
P projectnameChange to another project.
~Return to the top level of help topics.
carriage return onlyGo up one level of help topics.

If a topic name is typed in reply, phelp will print a page of information and then wait until a space is typed before it continues. 

Command line topics

Information on a specific topic can be requested by giving the phelp command with the topic name as an argument on the command line.  If the last argument is index, the subtopics corresponding to the previous argument are listed.  Provided the information has not been redirected to a file, phelp will prompt for further commands once it has finished printing. 

Creating topics

Project help files reside in the ‘help’ directory located in the project root directory. Subtopics are contained in subdirectories. A subtopic directory has the same name as a help file but with a ‘.d’ suffix. For example, if “bugfixes” is a subtopic of “news”, it will be found in the directory ‘news.d’, which itself is a subdirectory of the project ‘help’ directory. 

Subtopics can be nested to any level. 

Any filename beginning with a ‘.’ is ignored by phelp. 

OPTIONS

−P projectname
Specify a project other than the current working project.

EXAMPLES

In the following examples, bold script indicates what the user types. 

To find out about topic “news”:

% phelp
(prints introduction to phelp and a list of topics available)
??? news
(prints “news”)
??? q
%

Using command line arguments instead:

% phelp news
(prints “news”)
??? q
%

To print topic “news” on the line printer:

% phelp news | lpr
%

If “bugfixes” is a subtopic of “news”, then to print “news”, and
then “bugfixes”:

% phelp news
(prints “news”)
news subtopics:  bugfixes
news-->??? bugfixes
(prints “bugfixes”)
news-->??? q
%

FILES

/usr/new/lib/phelp.helpIntroduction on how to use phelp.
/usr/new/lib/phelp.cmdPhelp command summary.
project/help/*Help text files.
project/help/*.dSubtopic directories.

DIAGNOSTICS

Exit status 0 is normal. Exit status 1 indicates an error. 

AUTHOR

Peter J. Nicklin