Getting Help

This chapter describes how to obtain information about the Prism environment and other Sun products available at your site. It is organized into the following sections:

• Prism Online Help Systems
• Obtaining Online Documentation

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Prism Online Help Systems

To Get Help in the Prism Environment

Perform one of the following:

• Select an entry from the Help menu in the menu bar. The Help menu provides help on several major topics. See Choosing Selections From the Help Menu.
• Select an entry from the Help menus and Help button in windows and dialog boxes. These Help menus and the Help button provide instructions for using these screen areas. Pressing the F1 key in a window or dialog box also displays a help screen.
• Use the command-line help. The syntax of command-line help is

(prism all) help commandname

Command-line help provides information about commands you can issue from the command window.

Using the Browser-Based Help System

The Prism environment displays its help files using your World Wide Web browser. The default browser is Netscape, although your system administrator can change this.

To specify the HTML browser you want to use for the graphical mode of the Prism environment, set the Prism environment resource Prism.helpBrowser to the executable name of the browser. For detailed information about customizing this feature of the Prism environment, see Specifying a Different Browser for Displaying Help.

If you don't have a browser running, the Prism environment starts one. If you have a browser currently running as you use the Prism environment, by default the Prism environment displays the help information in that browser. You can change this behavior using the Prism.helpUseExisting resource. For detailed information about customizing this feature of the Prism environment, see Specifying a Different Browser for Displaying Help.

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Note - See Setting Up Your Working Environment for important information about setting up your environment for the Prism environment's use of your default browser to display the Prism environment's online help files.

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Choosing Selections From the Help Menu

The Help menu provides information in a variety of ways. You can choose:

• Using Help to display an overview of the Help system.
• Overview to display an overview of the features of the Prism environment.
• Glossary to display a list of terms used in the Prism environment. You can click on a term to find out more about it.
• Commands Reference to display a list of Prism commands. You can click on a command's link marker to obtain its reference description.
• Tutorial to display a tutorial that will teach you the basics of the Prism environment.

Getting Help on Using the Mouse

Some Prism windows include an icon of a mouse:

 

Click this icon to display information about using the mouse in the window.

Obtaining Help From the Command Window

To Obtain Help From the Command Window

Type

(prism all) help commands

This displays a list of Prism commands and editing key combinations.

Type

(prism all) help command-name

This displays help on that command.

Type

(prism all) help

This displays a brief message about how to use command-line help.

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Obtaining Online Documentation

The Prism environment's documentation is available both in print and in the PDF and PostScript formats. Prism also comes with a Solaris-style manual page.

Viewing Manual Pages

To Obtain a Manual Page

Choose the Man Pages selection from the Doc menu.

This brings up xman, a standard X program for viewing manual pages; xman operates independently of the Prism environment.

Help for xman appears in the xman window, as shown in FIGURE 7-1. You can use xman to view any Solaris manual pages available on your Sun system.

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Note - If xman is not available on your system, you will not be able to use this feature.

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 FIGURE 7-1 xman Window