At 07:33 PM 15/3/95 GMT, Steve Elmer wrote:
>I don't see any reason why the shell's man utility isn't being considered a
>help engine.  The contents of the help pages are up to the producer, but the
>tool itself seems to work well.  In addition, I believe that customers can
>add man pages to their own system.
 
A "help engine"????  The fact the source is formatted before being presented
does not a help engine make (IMHO).  Other than that, what does it do?  It
takes a couple of keywords and searches a set of directories to find the
first file which qualifies.  Maybe a crude "search engine", but I don't
think it qualifies as a help engine.  For one thing, it doesn't help much.
 
A help engine should *help*.  By my measure that means it should offer
multiple search criteria, multiple contexts and at the least a directed
graph it can follow.  Any links between help topics are provided only if you
have a pen and paper on hand.  The MPE Help facility barely makes it there.
The Windows WINHELP is much better.  httpd (WWW Server) is probably the
better still (though not integrated with many programs).  But man()????
 
Surely you jest! :)
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