>>>>> On Fri, 3 Sep 1993 08:46:07 GMT, pop@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Robin Popplestone) said:
Robin> Anthony Heading asks if he can use emacs instead of ved... The answer
Robin> is a little complicated.
....
Robin> However, there is I believe no emacs interface to the online
Robin> documentation of Poplog - you can of course read the files if
Robin> you can find them, and even executed chunks of code.
Mr. Caley wrote pop-sys-file-mode.el to handle this. I've hacked it a
bit as the following comments detail. Basically key bindings are more
akin to Emacs info mode (Space for scrolling down a document, DEL for
scroll back).
From my pop-sys-file-mode.el ...
;; 3rd Apr 1992 cah
;; Changed and added bindings to allow pop-help etc. by keystroke.
;; Changed the way it uses buffers to display help. Now opens a new
;; buffer for each help/teach topic.
;; Added pop-quit-help to kill unwanted help buffers.
;; 8th Apr 1992 cah
;; Added method of generating an index of possible files from the
;; relevent directories. This should then allow help/teach file name
;; completion in usual Emacs fashion. Changes to definitions of
;; pop-help, pop-teach, etc. required.
A better solution to this second section would be to load a ready
generated index from each directory, which could be maintained by
system administration. Filenames need not then agree with the
help/teach topic, and you could have multiple entry points to the same
help. I find emacs dynamically builds these indices quickly anyway.
In short, even as is, it beats scanning a possibly inconsistent
"index" file.
And of course the best solution would be to have the teach help system
written in Emacs-Info style ;-) I do get a little frustrated by the
disorganised nature of Poplog help (and cross-referencing - see
below).
Anyone wanting my hacked pop-sys-file-mode.el please contact me. I'm
sure it could do with some tidying up and extra functionality for
navigating through documentation. I don't have the time for a while to
implement any more additions people may want... ideas are welcomed,
however.
One problem I've noted in following cross references is that in many
help files they are given in upper case where the filename is
lowercase. In the case of the X help systems they are given as in the
filename. I've just added an unsatisfactory hack which suppresses
conversion of subject filename to lower case if the first character is
an upper case "X" and the last character is lowercase, but it'll do
for now.
Ceri
--
Ceri Hopkins
School of Computer Science C.A.Hopkins@Cs.Bham.Ac.Uk
University of Birmingham Tel. +44-21-414-3743
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