| Re: Help with help files. [message #6996 is a reply to message #6901] |
Wed, 04 September 1996 00:00  |
thompson
Messages: 584
Registered: August 1991
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Senior Member |
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Dyer Lytle <dlytle@as.arizona.edu> writes:
> Hi all,
> I was wondering how people handle on-line documentation in IDL.
> We have developed about 8 different applications in IDL that we
> distribute to our user base of about 40 people at various locations
> and each of these applications has associated with it one or more
> online "help" files. Currently, we ask our users to define their
> "IDL_PATH" so that IDL can find the various tasks to execute and
> we have them define a directory called "IDL_DOC" that we reference
> whenever we call "xdisplayfile" from an application, i.e.
> CASE event OF
> 'help': BEGIN
> xdisplayfile,'$IDL_DOC/example.hlp'
> END
> Does anyone know a way to somehow use "IDL_PATH" to find this
> documentation rather then useing a seperate environmental variable?
> Or perhaps someone has a better approach to IDL on-line documentation?
What we do is to use a program called XDOC which allows one to access the
documentation headers at the beginning of each file. It's a very nice program
where one can explore the entire IDL_PATH tree.
We also have a routine called FIND_WITH_DEF that finds a file anywhere in a
series of directories, so that one could do, for instance
xdisplayfile, find_with_def('example.hlp', !PATH)
This software is available as part of the Solar Software library at
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/software.html
ftp://sohoftp.nascom.nasa.gov/solarsoft/gen/idl/help (and /system)
I think it's also available from the Astronomy User's Library at
http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp/
ftp://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Bill Thompson
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