Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!udel!mmdf
From: "kosma@ALAN.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM"@alan.kahuna.decnet.lockheed.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: On-line help (was Re: Things that need to be on the Amiga (Was: ENV: handler (was Re: A ...)))
Message-ID: <21474@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 11 Aug 89 01:38:53 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 47

Received: from GEORG.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM by ALAN.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 34092; Thu 10-Aug-89 14:23:09 PDT
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 89 14:23 PDT
From: Montgomery Kosma 
Subject: Re: On-line help (was Re: Things that need to be on the Amiga (Was: ENV: handler (was Re: A ...)))
To: "Eagle::amiga-relay%udel.edu"@KAHUNA.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM
In-Reply-To: Your message of 10 Aug 89 12:39 PDT
Message-ID: <19890810212305.8.KOSMA@GEORG.LAAC-AI.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM>
 
    This sounds nice but for me, I just wrote a short shell script called
    "man" and put it in my s: directory.  When I type "man command", it
    runs my favorite text viewing program on a help file of the same name
    in my docs: directory.  I put all the ARP1.3 manual pages here and
    every time I add a utility that came with a doc file, I add it also.
    Typing "man" with no arguments just displays my docs:man file which
    lists all the available on-line doc files.  It works just like
    man on UNIX. Of course you can't do all this without a hard disk
    (I have about 130 doc files on line).
 
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
    IBM - Inconsequential Bit Manipulator
 
			    Lyle Levine   lel@wuphys.wustl.edu
					  ...!uunet!wucs1!wuphys!lel
 
Something a step further which I've done is to create an alias using the
FIND program (I got it off of peoplelink).  The nice thing about this is
that it's basically a one-liner command, you don't have to type the
whole filename (e.g. typing "help vt100" would get vt100.doc), and you
can get multiple help files with one command (e.g. typing "help vt"
would get vt100.doc, vtek.doc, etc.)
 
first of all, I have a docs: directory assigned as well (true enough
that you can't do this w/o a hard disk).  Then, my shell-startup has:
 
alias help find docs: -name  *[]* -exec blitz {} ";"
 
(this is from my memory so it might not be quite right)
 
and to be even more sophisticated I've made it look for files with the
suffix .doc or .readme with separate commands, depending upon what type
of info I need.
 
Works quite well!
 
monty kosma