unix help routines

[Mike A. Gigante]

  >From: mwh_adev at jhunix.UUCP (JHU UNIX Development Group) [Paul Markowitz]
  >Subject: unix help routines
  >Organization: Johns Hopkins Univ. Computing Ctr.
  >
  >I am interested in help routines for the unix system.  The manual is
  >ok but is very difficult if you don't know already what you are looking
  >for. 

I have also thought about this, the Unix documentation is *bad* for the 
novice Unix users and *terrible* (even off-putting) for the novice computer
user.  At our site, this has led to great reluctance to using our Unix boxes
from our faculty staff (mainly traditional mechanical engineering).  They
even prefer to use the institute's cyber!! [:-)]  At least on the cyber,
they can get semi-reasonable on-line help (with prompting for arguments etc.)

One reason for the dislike of Unix documentation is the difficulty of finding
the correct thing to ask for.  For example, you *must* know that strlen is
in string(3) to find out about it.  I realise that ptx addresses that problem,
but I would argue that for the *novice* user, this isn't sufficient.

The keyword entries are also *woefully* inadequate.  Just try `man -k files`,
and you'll see what I mean (no mention of many important commands that deal
with files)

  >
  >What I am interested in is a menu driven help routine similar to VMS help.
  >

Even better than VMS help is the Embos help system (for the Elxsi 6400),
it's been quite a while since I used the system, but it had excellent
facilities for on-line help.  Some of the nicer facilities are:

	- *good* keyword indexing for manual entries
	- indexing on arbitrary strings (inc. stripping suffixes, partial-
		match)
	- ability to retrieve each section of a manual entry
		(e.g. USAGE section, OPTIONS, EXAMPLES etc. -- the example
		section was generally *very good*)
	- was written in a better style than typical of Unix documentation.

Most of this is not difficult, just takes a little time.  Some of it
could be easily automated esp. the keyword indexing etc.  I would really
like to someone implement the manual section retrieval.

If I wasn't so busy, I'd think about doing it myself.

Mike G.
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		Michael Gigante [Research Engineer]	
UUCP :...!seismo!munnari!cidam.oz!mg    Dept Mechanical & Production Eng.
ARPA :mg%cidam.oz at seismo.css.gov        Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
CSNET:mg%cidam.oz			GPO Box 2476V
Phone: +61 3 660-2161 			Melbourne Vic., Australia 3001
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