NAME

help_viewer − SunView application providing help with applications and desktop

SYNOPSIS

/usr/lib/help_viewer [ options ]

AVAILABILITY

Sun386i systems only. 

DESCRIPTION

help_viewer allows you to quickly access documentation about SunView applications and the SunView Desktop.  This help consists of intermixed text and graphics displayed in a window called the Help Viewer. 

There are two ways help_viewer can be invoked.  One is as a stand-alone SunView application, where help_viewer starts up with a list of the applications that it contains documentation for.  The second way to reach help_viewer is by clicking on the More Help button in a Spot Help window.  In this case, the Help Viewer comes up with text specific to the current application and context. 

The documentation within help_viewer is extendable, but as shipped it includes handbooks for the DeskTop, mailtool(1), shelltool(1), textedit(1), organizer, SunPC, and itself (help_viewer). 

The available documentation depends only on the existence of the appropriate files in the directories specified under FILES. 

The user moves between the various pages of help with the assistance of hypertext links. Links are symbolic connections between pages of text. The current convention at Sun is to use underlined text to indicate the presence of a link. When the user double-clicks on a link, the text associated with the topic indicated by the link is shown in the Help Viewer. There are links in many places to make it quick and easy to go from place to place within the help_viewer database. 

At the lower levels in the hierarchy of help files, many of the topics contain more than one page of text, and in these cases a link to the next page and to the previous page is available at the upper-right corner of the Help Viewer which allows you to page through the document. 

The current position within the hierarchy of text is indicated by the links at the upper-left corner of the Help Viewer. The last link in the list is the level just above your current position. 

OPTIONS

The standard SunView options for window size, position, fonts, and other options are allowed. See sunview(1) for details. 

−dir dirname
Name of help directory

−file filename [#]
Name of startup file relative to help directory (or /usr/lib/help by default).  # is a page number separated from the filename by a SPACE.  If # is omitted, the first page is shown. 

FILES

/usr/lib/help directory containing miscellaneous help files

The files in /usr/lib/help are used by the help and the help_viewer facilities, and the SCCS help(1) facility. 

Directories within /usr/lib/help named after SunView applications and the DeskTop contain specific information used by help_viewer.  See help_viewer(5) for information about the files in these directories. 

SEE ALSO

help(1), mailtool(1), shelltool(1), textedit(1), help_viewer(5)

DIAGNOSTICS

help_viewer(1) displays a pop-up error window if it cannot find the file required to show the requested help. 

Sun Release 4.0  —  Last change: 19 February 1988