Conan The Librarian - Help *Conan The Librarian

> Affectionately known as Conan the Librarian, and with all due acknowlegement to Wierd Al Yankovic `:^)` this script makes VMS Help and Text libraries accessable in the hypertext environment. It also provides a keyword search facility, both from a search dialog on relevant pages, and using a URL query string.

VMS Help

> The system's default help library (as with command-line HELP) can be accessed using the URL

>       /help

> To access a specific topic, say on the SHOW command, use something like

>       /help/show

> Qualifiers may be specified using either a leading slash or a leading underscore, as illustrated

>       /help/show/symbol/qualifiers//all
>       /help/show/symbol/qualifiers/_all

> In addition to the search dialog on relevant pages the help library and and major topics may be searched for a keyword using the URL field. The following example shows the string "management" being searched for first in the whole library, then just within the show topic.

>       /help?management
>       /help/show?management

> Note that if another HELP script is using the "/help" path that "/conan" should also access the libraian. Which means these forms will also work:

>       /conan
>       /conan/show
>       /conan/show?management

Other Help Libraries

> To access other than the default VMS help library merely specify the file using the URL-equivalent path as in the following example:

>       /help/sys$common/syshlp/mailhelp.hlb

Text Libraries

> The librarian also allows VMS Text Libraries to accessed and searched. Just provide the URL-equivalent path to the library.

>       /conan/sys$common/syslib/erflib.tlb

> Text library modules accessed are returned as plain-text documents. This makes them particularly suitable for accessed programming language libraries as with the C header library (if on this system):

>      /conan/sys$common/syslib/decc$rtldef.tlb

Other Librarian Functionality

> To obtain an index of matching libraries explicitly activate the Conan script providing a wildcard file specification, as in the following example:

>       /conan/sys$common/syshlp/*.hlb

> To obtain the library header information add a query string to the library file specification, as follows:

>       /conan/sys$common/syshlp/helplib.hlb?do=header

> To provide a menu os possible functions add a query string to the library file specification, as follows:

>       /conan/sys$common/syshlp/helplib.hlb?do=menu

Conan The Librarian v3.0; May 1998