[gambit-list] Help system

Marc Feeley feeley at iro.umontreal.ca
Thu Feb 12 10:33:37 EST 2009


With release v4.4.1 there are a few features which allow documentation  
to be accessed easily.  The "help" procedure is documented on the  
Gambit wiki here:

http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/~gambit/wiki/index.php/Documentation:Procedure_help

For example, the call (help table->list) will start a browser (the  
text-only lynx browser by default) which views the section of the  
Gambit manual documenting the table->list procedure.

There is also a REPL comma command for accessing the documentation.   
The long form ,(h NAME) will view the procedure or special form NAME.   
The short form ,h will view the procedure which raised the exception  
which started the REPL.

The Gambit wiki now contains the documentation for all the Gambit  
public procedures and special forms.  It is currently a copy of the  
documentation in the Gambit manual.  Of course the advantage of the  
wiki documentation is that it is editable.  I'm hoping that people  
will contribute to the documentation by adding comments, corrections,  
examples, and information of interest to other users.  The plan is to  
integrate these contributions back to the Gambit manual on a regular  
basis.  Note that the Gambit manual uses the "texinfo" markup  
language, and for consistency this is also the markup language that  
the wiki documentation pages use (I wrote a texinfo to HTML plugin for  
the wiki which handles <texinfo> ... </texinfo> tags).  For the  
integration to go smoothly the user contributions on the wiki should  
also be in texinfo format.

The Gambit manual in HTML format and the wiki documentation are cross  
linked.  If you click on the procedure or special form name in the  
HTML Gambit manual you will go to the page on the wiki documenting  
that procedure or special form.  If you click on the name on the wiki  
you will go to the page in the HTML manual.  This is useful when you  
want to read contextual documentation (like chapter introductions,  
related procedures, the table of contents, etc).

Marc




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