F1 Please… in UNIX

By Gururaj B S

Since the advent of computers, users have constantly felt the need to invent new things in order to meet their programming and software design requirements. This urge to invent new things gradually resulted in the development of UNIX, a simple and elegant operating system. Consequently, the designers of UNIX mulled over providing programmer-friendly documentation for programming interfaces in the form of Man pages.

Man pages define almost everything about how a particular flavor of UNIX works. They are often concise and unfathomable. Man pages seem to work well with C interfaces.

Characteristically, a man page for an object-oriented language interface includes the documentation for all its member functions, constructors, operators, etc., which could result in lengthy and unintelligible man pages. The man page material is principally allusion oriented with minimal information. Seasoned programmers find man pages very useful, but a naïve user would find them overwhelming.

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To view the man page associated with the ls command, a UNIX user must type man ls at the shell command prompt. Shell is a command interpreter; which interprets a user’s instructions and executes them by acting as a conduit to Kernel, the core of the UNIX operating system.

When a user types man at the shell command prompt, man searches in several directories, as appropriate, for the specified manual entry. The search continues until either the manual entry is found, or all candidate directories are searched. The first three directories searched, in order, are: /usr/share/man, /usr/contrib/man, and /usr/local/man. Within each of these directories, man searches in the cat*.Z subdirectories, the man*.Z subdirectories, and the man* subdirectories.

About Context-sensitive Help for UNIX

Yes, it is possible to implement context-sensitive help for the UNIX operating system. The help writer should remember a few things here: context numbers or .htm file names corresponding to help topics or both. It is the responsibility of the UNIX application developer to incorporate context-sensitive help in the application by invoking the appropriate help application and passing the associated context number or .htm topic file name. UNIX uses a function called system () that passes command arguments to the command interpreter, which executes a string as an operating-system command.

Besides, UNIX supports a tool called X-motif that allows help authors or programmers to design UNIX-compatible screens of their choice. The visual appeal of these screens is as alluring as Windows. Nonetheless, it is important that a help author or designer understand the nuances of programming and UNIX concepts before designing the help system for an application designed to run on the UNIX platform.

Using XML to develop help for UNIX-based applications

XML is the order of the day! It ensures consistency across all help windows/pages in terms of look and feel, and Web layout. XML files are converted into unified HTML pages by an XML technology called Extensible Style Sheet Language Transforms (XSLT). These HTML pages can be integrated with an application by the application developer while designing its user interfaces. In case of a change in Web page and template guidelines, the application developer must incorporate the new binaries into the product, and XSLT automatically revises the HTML pages it generates.

Technology is evolving; people are evolving. Let us evolve ourselves with this technology revolution.

Recommended Reading

http://unix.ittoolbox.com/nav/t.asp?t=341&p=341&h1=341

http://unix.ittoolbox.com/default2.asp

http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/archives/0005/techwhirl-0005-00966.html

http://h30097.www3.hp.com/docs/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/
V50_HTML/ARH9QATE/DOCU_005.HTM

http://www.bristol.com/hyperhelp/

http://thunder.prohosting.com/~bricks/linux/x11/xmotif.htm

http://stc-india.org/activities/learningsessions/sessions.htm

(Gururaj B S works as a Technical Content Expert for a technology company in Bangalore.)

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