Information Module
M. Astley

This application is a front end for a relocatable module that provides quick reference help on a number of programming topics. Help text is displayed in an Edit task window, so RISC OS 2 users will need to have Edit loaded.

Every time the front end application is run, the information module is loaded so that Help is instantly available from the application or the command line.


Command Line Help
=================

Help is also available to command line addicts, through the operating system's Help command. The module is known to the operating system as "GInfo". Giving the command:

HELP GINFO

from the command line responds with a list of new Help keywords, as listed below.


New Help Keywords
=================


*Help Info

==> Help on keyword Info
Module is: General info    0.32 (22 May 1990)

It has help on:
256ColModes     ARMflags        ARMshifts       [
ColScales       EggTimer        Modes           OPT
OSWrites        RMHeader        ScaledText      VDU19
Windows




Source Code
===========

The source code for the module is a combination of the program 'AssemInfo', the text file 'Index' and the datafiles contained in the 'Data' directory within the application. It is possible to write your own Help and save it as datafiles in the 'Data' directory. This new information can be assembled into the GInfo module using the Assemble option from the front end application icon bar menu. RISC User would like to hear of any Help extensions from interested readers.

Text files containing the new help are saved into the Data directory inside the application, and the name of the file is placed in the 'Index' file. If the keyword name is different to the filename, the name should be placed after the keyword, separated by a space. See the "Index" file for an example.

If you wish to set out a table, it is important to use Alt-Space, the '' character instead of a normal space. If you use the tab key to set out columns, the effect can be achieved using search and replace to change ordinary spaces to hard spaces.

The help text is sent to OS_PrettyPrint when the operating system asks for Help, so lines will be word-wrapped automatically to the appropriate length.

Linefeeds and hard spaces in the file are converted by the program, since OS_PrettyPrint, to which the text is sent, expects carriage returns and ASCII [1F] characters as part of its input. A terminating null byte is also added.




 RISC User 1993
