filePro UNIX Manual Page I Wrote

[Laura Brody]

At 04:39 AM 7/30/2004, Fairlight wrote:
>You'll never BELIEVE what Joe Chasan said here...:
> >
> > failing that, if bob or someone else has the time and interest to concoct
> > a shell script to read the makemenu.hlp and build man pages from it i'm
> > sure we'd all benefit as we can recreate with each release.

         I always thought that filePro man pages would be quite useful.
I even looked into a man program for DOS so that more people could use
the files. I just didn't have the time to pursue this.

>I could have spared the time.  I did in fact look at differing .hlp files
>on differing versions tonight.
>
>I've come to the conclusion that the only things that are actually standard
>in the file format are the @@@ lines, the \r reverse video indicators, and
>comments.
>
>The rest...I looked at makemenu.hlp and dcabe.hlp.  The formatting of the
>actual contents of the sections is pretty much arbitrary, with variable
>amounts of whitespace that can't be depended on to give you a really
>sensible .hlp -> manpage converter.  You could convert whole sections, but
>making them look even halfway meaningful would require something more akin
>to an AI program than a simple parser.  Even with liberal use of powerful
>regexps, there are too many variations and exceptions to get it right in
>any reasonable amount of time.
>
>I think I can safely say I'll save myself the headache and take a pass on
>this one.  I'd have liked to help, really.  Sounded fun until I saw just
>how well-structured the section contents aren't.  :(

         Well, with my .hlp files, there ARE formating "rules" that
would make a conversion script possible. There are standard labels
in the text and standard locations for these labels.

         I have attached small sections of dcabe.hlp and makemenu.hlp
for you to examine. If you think that there is a possibility of
converting my files to man pages. I would be willing to donate my
source files to a public domain project (I would just want some kind
of text in it that says that no one is allowed to sell it, and that
this is a derivation of a bigger product that can be purchased from
me followed by a URL.)

Laura Brody, Publisher of the "filePro Developer's Journal"
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