PsiLAB Help Manual Page

Section: Help system

Name: help

PsiLAB Help System.
The help function prints the help content of the given keyword to the output device set by the help_dev function. The default setting is Term for the text terminal.
Usage:
help "keyword" ;; 

The keyword is matched against the help list topic names. All help items are printed containing the keyword in the beginning of their help name.
The output device can be set with the help_dev function. Available output devices:
  1. Text terminal : help_dev Term ;;
  2. Troff output file: help_dev Troff ;;
  3. Html output file: help_dev Html ;;

To produce postscript output, use the Troff driver, and convert the troff output in postscript using groff :
groff -me -ms name.tr > name.ps 

New help manuals can be added with the help_add function.
The arguments for the help_add function are:

The help module contains a simple formatter to format the help text. There are several format command, all beginning with a dot, and 1 ore 2 following upper case characters.
Font commands:

.B switch to bold face font
.I switch to italic font
.T switch to typewritter font
.R switch back to (default) roman font

Greek letters:

.G <char> prints the character as greek letter
.G a -> a
.G b -> b
.G g -> g
.G G -> G
.G d -> d
.G D -> d
.G h -> h
.G H -> H
.G m -> mand many more...


Sub- and superscript commands:
.SB start subscript mode
.BS end subscript mode
.SP start superscript mode
.PS end superscript mode


Environments:
.DE start an indented definition block
.ED end of a definition block
.EX start an example block (print text in verbatim mode)
.XE end of a example block
.BO start a boxed block
.OB end of a boxed block


List commands:
.OL start an ordered (numbered) list
.LO end of an ordered (numbered) list
.UL start an unordered (bulleted) list
.LU end of an unordered (bulleted) list
.LI a new list item

Except in the example and definition environment, a line break must be forced with the .NL command. A dot command must be preceeded and followed by spaces.
Example:

help_add "My tool section" "myfunction" "myfunc" " 
This document describes my new function .I myfunction .R . Now I want to 
start a new paragraph. .NL 

A definition: 
.DE 
.B argz:string .R 
.ED 
.NL 
";; 


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