WOMAN(1) UTILITIES WOMAN(1) NAME WOMAN : To display command's manual pages. SYNOPSIS WOMAN [[-p Man_Path]|[command]] REGISTRATION WOMAN is a Shareware software written by Bernard Piette. This is a demo version that can only read 30 files per directory. The registered version of WOMAN comes with nearly 600 manual entries and has no limitations on the number of files that can be displayed. TO REGISTER Send 5 British pounds or $10 US (no cheques from outside the UK ) to Bernard Piette Collingwood College, South road DURHAM DH13LT ENGLAND DESCRIPTION WOMAN lists a short manual for the specified command on the Amiga screen. WOMAN opens its own screen and makes it possible to scroll through the text using arrow gadgets, a proportional gadget, or keyboard keys. The UP and DOWN cursor keys scroll the text upwards or downwards one line at a time. The SHIFT UP and SHIFT DOWN keys scroll the text 10 lines at a time. Moreover, the "b" and "t" move respectively to the bottom and the top of the text. There are different ways to select a given manual. The first one is to select the "Open" item of the "File" menu. This will produce a requester prompting for a manual name. After entering a name, one can either click on the "OK" button to display the desired manual, or click on the "CANCEL" button to abort. The easiest way to select a manual is to click twice on its name when it appears on the screen. If there is a manual for that name, it will automatically appear on the screen. This is very useful as many manuals refer to other ones, or use technical words which are described by one entry in the Dictionary group. Clicking on any name in a text, displays the corresponding manual. The manuals are grouped together into different categories, (Dos, Utils ...) each one of them being represented by a subdirectory of the MAN: directory that contains the manuals for that category. The DIR menu items correspond to the list of the available categories. When one of these items is selected, WOMAN lists the names for the manuals of that category. Clicking twice on one of these names will automatically display the corresponding manual on the screen. When a manual is read by WOMAN, it is kept in memory so that further references to it are faster. WOMAN also keeps a list of the last manuals read. It is then possible to recall the previous manuals using the "Last File" item of the file menu (or the corresponding keyboard shortcut). There is no limit on the number of manuals that can be linked that way. When reading a given manual, it is then very easy to display other manual entries one after another and then go back one entry at a time up to the first one. When the content of a directory (category) is listed on the screen, the list of the last read manuals is emptied. The "Dir" item of the "File" menu lists the content of the directory to which the current manual belongs. The "Close All" item removes all the manuals in memory. This will free some memory, but means that WOMAN will have to read from disk all the manual that will be selected afterward. When a manual is selected, WOMAN looks first for that manual in the current category. If it does not find it, it then looks in all the other category, starting in the first one. As different categories can contain manuals with the same name, the way the categories are ordered is important. If WOMAN does not find a name that matches exactly the selected name it then look for a name that is close to it. This is useful for example for manual like "directory". The name can appear either as "directory" or "directories" in a text. Clicking on either of them will display the "directory" manual. WOMAN followed by a manual name will start WOMAN and will display the specified manual. When it starts, WOMAN lists all the categories found in the MAN: directory. If WOMAN is started from the SHELL with the -p switch followed by a path, that path is assigned to MAN: and manual categories are extracted from it. WOMAN can be left running permanently in the background, putting its screen behind the others, or at the bottom of the screen. When the WOMAN window is made active (by clicking anywhere in it), its screen is moved at the top of the display, and in front of all the other screens. This way accessing WoMan is as easy as it can be. MENU WOMAN has three menus, each of them containing items that can be selected with the mouse, or using the appropriate key short cut. -FILE : The file menu contains 6 items: -Open : to open a manual entry by typing in its name. -Dir : to list the content of the category to which the current manual belongs. -Last File : to display the previous manuals. -Close All : to free all the previously read manuals, and thus freeing some memory. -About : a short registration message about WOMAN. -QUIT : to quit WOMAN. -DIR : the content of this menu will vary according to the directory in the MAN: assignment. Each item corresponds to a category and selecting one of them lists the manual names for that category. When it starts WOMAN first looks for the file MAN:.WdirW . If it exists, its content (one name per line) is interpreted as the listing of all the files and directory in the MAN: directory. If it does not exist, then the content of MAN: is read from the disk and ordered alphabetically. The category order is important as Woman always starts searching for a manual entry in the current category and then looks in the other directories in the order in which they are put. The Selection menu, contains a few items to modify the content and the order of the different listings. -SELECTION : This menu contains a few items to alter the order and the selections of manuals. -Discard Entry : the name currently selected will be remove from the list. This does not remove the file or directory from the disk, but only removes the name from the list kept internally by WoMan. -Move to Top : this moves the selected name at the first place in the list. The order in which subdirectories of MAN: are put is important for the way manuals are selected. To modify that order, you must select each name and move them to the top of the list, in the REVERSE order of the desired one ( This is because, each time an item is pushed at the top of the list, it moves all the other items 1 position down.) -Save Dir. List : when this item is selected, the listing of the current category is saved in a file called ".WdirW". The next time Woman is started, that file will be read to know the content and the order of that directory. The aim of that file is not only to order the entries in a specific way, but also to make WoMan faster to start as reading the content of a directory that contains many files can take quite a while. The name used for the directory listing (.WdirsW by default) can be set in the WoMan preferences. -Read Dir. from Disk : the item is the opposite of the previous one. When it is selected, the content of the current directory is read from the disk. This is useful to reorganize a directory, or include new files that have been added to the list of manuals. After executing this operation, one would normally remove the .WdirsW file (as well as some other one), and use the "Save Dir. List" item to update the ".WdirW" file. -Preferences : this item opens the WoMan preference window. It is possible to set the Color of the WoMan screen, the directory path for MAN: , the name of the files used to save the content of the directories, and the path where the preference file will be saved. Each color is shown in a square. Clicking on one of them select the corresponding color. It is then possible to use the proportional gadget or the up and down button to modify each component of the color. The leftmost up and down arrow gadgets can be used to modify the shade of the color. The three string gadgets at the right of the window are used to set the MAN: path, the name of the file used to save the directory listings as well as the path name for the directory where the preferences file has to be saved. The 3 buttons named OK, CANCEL and SAVE close the preference window. CANCEL ignore the modification made and uses the last selected values. OK uses the selected parameters, whereas SAVE uses but also saves in the preference files the modified values. The DEFAULT button resets all the parameters to their default value. The Preference parameters can be saved in a file called ".WoMan.prefs". When WoMan starts, it looks for that file in the current directory, in the S: directory and then in the man: directory. If it can't find it, then it uses the default values for the different parameters. -Change Root Dir : When this item is selected, a string requester appears, and prompts the user for a directory path name. If a name is selected, it will be used to initialize the string in the requester. The chosen directory will become the root directory for WoMan, that is, it will be considered as the MAN: directory (even though the MAN: assignment is not modified.) This item is aimed at making WoMan usable to display files in directories others than the manual ones. To return to the MAN: directory, simply select this item and enter "MAN:" in the string requester. SPECIAL KEYS -UP : move 1 line upwards. -DOWN : move 1 line downwards. -SHIFT UP : move 10 line upwards. -SHIFT DOWN : move 10 line downwards. -b : move to bottom of text. -t : move to top of text. SEE ALSO MAN. EXAMPLES The simplest way to start WOMAN is by running it in the background: > RUN WOMAN It is not necessary to RUN it, but it does not make any harm, and as reading the list of manual entries take some time, it is better to keep it running all the time. To open a manual immediately at startup: > RUN WOMAN ask To select a different path for the manual entry: > RUN WOMAN -p MyDisk:man ; list the manual for MORE.