From: "George D. Greenwade" <bed_gdg@SHSU.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: RE: On-line help for TeX/LaTeX?
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 13:33:04 CST
Organization: Info-Tex<==>Comp.Text.Tex Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List

On Mon, 16 Nov 92 21:02:13 -0500, Aloke Phatak
<phatak@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> posted privately:
> Sorry to clutter up your mailbox with a direct request, but I asked this
> question on Comp.text.tex a while ago, and I recently saw it posted from
> another LaTeX user, without any reply:
>
> Is there a program for on-line help on TeX/LaTeX commands?  I think that I
> read about one in a TUGBOAT article, but try as I might, I can't seem to
> find it again despite having scoured back issues a couple of times.  My
> only recourse therefore is to check with the keeper of the SHSU archives!
>
> I DO have the TeX/LaTeX bibles, but it sure would be nice sometimes to type
> something like
>
>                 help \mbox
>
> at the terminal and get a summary of the command syntax.
>
> Do you know of any such program?

I did see this earlier and had been meaning to respond (hence my public
response now).  I don't know of such a program, per se (but would love to
hear of one, especially if it was ported to a number of platforms).  At any
rate, I have hacked up something which might be of interest to you,
provided you are on VMS.  It takes two more parameters to pass, but it gets
the job done pretty well.

I copied all of the lower-level (4 and 5) help topics out of the LATEX.HLP
file distributed by DECUS and added them as level 3 topics under "Commands". 
I inserted these changes into the DECUS_TEX help library file, which is
used as an ancillary help library at SHSU.  Thus, you can type:
 help latex commands \mbox
(or whatever the shortest unique string is) at the system prompt and you
get the text of the help file for that topic.  I added a SEE ALSO note to
the broader topic under "Commands" which it came from.  Thus, something
such as
 help latex commands \author 
will point you to Page_Styles and \maketitle within the existing "Commands"
topic level (or for \mbox, you are referred to Spaces_and_Boxes, which has
the broader family available).

Users here (at least the ones who know about how to properly use it), find
it useful.  Maybe others at other sites would as well.  Obviously, if you
aren't using the DECUS TeX distribution, you may want to edit out the
"Qualifiers" section, which are pretty specific to that distribution, or
modify them to your site's application.

The file is available for email retrieval by including:
 SENDME VMS-LATEX-HELP
in the body of a mail message to FILESERV@SHSU.BITNET (FILESERV@SHSU.edu). 
It is distributed in a 4-part set which need to be concatenated upon
receipt.  For anonymous ftp retrieval from Niord.SHSU.edu (192.92.115.8),
the whole file is in [FILESERV.VMS-LATEX-HELP] as LATEX.HLP.

Hope this of help to someone else somewhere.  Certainly, comments,
improvements, whatever are welcomed from anyone who uses it.

Regards,   George
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
George D. Greenwade, Ph.D.                            Bitnet:  BED_GDG@SHSU
Department of Economics and Business Analysis         THEnet: SHSU::BED_GDG
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P. O. Box 2118                                        FAX:   (409) 294-3612
Sam Houston State University              Internet:        bed_gdg@SHSU.edu
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