HELP HELP                                    Aaron Sloman, December 1988

The HELP facility provides online documentation about the Poplog
languages, the editor, the window manager and the libraries. It includes
a browsing facility that enables cross-references within help files to
be followed up quickly and easily.


    CONTENTS - (Use <ENTER> g to access required sections)

 -- Introduction
 -- Summary help files using <ENTER> ??
 -- Overview help files
 -- Listing potentially relevant help files
 -- Cross-references in HELP files
 -- Quitting a HELP file
 -- Related Documentation


-- Introduction -------------------------------------------------------

Just as you can type to POP11
    teach <topic>

so you can also type
    help <topic>

You can type this directly to the top-level prompt, or once inside the
editor you can type it on the command line: i.e.
    <ENTER> help <topic>

All the commands have to be terminated by pressing the <RETURN> key.

E.g. this file is called up by typing

    help help


-- Summary help files using <ENTER> ?? --------------------------------

Instead of a full help file you may wish to read a short summary of the
topic. You can do this, in VED, with the command

    <ENTER> ?? <topic>

e.g.
    <ENTER> ?? substring

will print a summary description of the Pop-11 -substring- procedure.

See HELP * QUERY for more details.


-- Overview help files ------------------------------------------------

Some of the HELP files give overview descriptions of a range of related
facilities. Examples are HELP * CONTROL and HELP * CLASSES.

The most general overview HELP file is HELP * HELPFILES, which provides
pointers to all the different categories of HELP files. A still more
general file is HELP * DOCUMENTATION, which gives an overview of the
different kinds of documentation accessible from VED.


-- Listing potentially relevant help files ----------------------------

You can sometimes find out if there is help on a topic by typing

    <ENTER> helpfor <topic>

This will print out the names of all the help files that include
<topic> as a substring in their name.

For example, try

    <ENTER> helpfor word


-- Cross-references in HELP files -------------------------------------

Many help files have cross references to other help files. These are
usually indicated by an asterisk preceding the name of the file, as in
HELP * STRINGS. You can find the next such cross reference automatically
by pressing the <ESC> key followed by the N key: this causes the editor
to search for the next isolated asterisk (if there is one). To go back
to a previous cross reference, press <ESC> and then <SHIFT> N.

Once the cursor is on the asterisk, you can ask for the corresponding
help file to be displayed by pressing the <ESC> key followed by the H
key. This saves typing <ENTER> HELP name.


-- Quitting a HELP file -----------------------------------------------

You can abandon a HELP file (or any other file) by pressing <ESC> then
Q. (or <ENTER> q <RETURN>).


-- Related Documentation ----------------------------------------------

See also

    HELP * DOCUMENTATION    - General overview of Poplog documentation
    HELP * HELPFILES        - overview of the help files
    HELP * INDEX            - index of help files


--- C.all/help/help
--- Copyright University of Sussex 1991. All rights reserved. ----------
