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