Documentation

Simple Online Help

Brief command descriptions are available for most commands in DERVISH. These are implemented using the "FTCL help facility". It is required than all commands implement at least a brief help. More extensive help, and rationale are available through the Narrative help facilities, described below, The Help Facility is available using the "help" command and has the following features: help * List ALL commands and full messages for them help cmd Show the message text associated with command CMD help cmd -full List ALL available commands help facil=facil1,facil2 List Commands associated with FACIL1 and FACIL2 help -search=pattern List all commands whose messages contain PATTERN help -search=pattern -full List all commands and help text for commands whose messages contain PATTERN. help -sort List all commands sorted by command name

World Wide Web

Long narrative help is available using the World Wide Web system. This system implements a "web" connected documents using hypertext The system supports many word processors and mark-up languages.

Programs called browsers access this information. Simple browsers which operate on ordinary files are available. A browser called "xmosaic" was used to view the documentation developed for or integrated into DERVISH. A command, "www" is in TCL DERVISH which starts the "Xmosaic" browser.

The UNIX command "setup dervish" sets an environmental variable, "WWW_HOME" to point to a page of hypertext which dispatches to much of the DERVISH documentation. Having set WWW_HOME to the DERVISH home page, both the "xmosaic" command from UNIX and the "www" command from TCL will give you a good starting position to hunt for information.

Paper Documentation

Hardcopy documentation may be obtained from a www browser, or by looking in "doc" directories of DERVISH and its component products.

  • $DERVISH_DIR/doc
  • $FTCL_DIR/doc
  • $FSAO_DIR/doc