Help Menu Help
Name:Help Menu
Version:9.2.3
Last update:2021-05-21 14:43:28



Introduction

This document gives a brief description of Alpha's Help menu. The Help menu contains items that give access to any part of the documentation.

The Help Search Field

At the top of the Help menu is a Search Field where you can enter any topic, command or package name you want to get information about.

Alpha's help is preindexed and the search engine can very quickly look up and find all the available references. The results are displayed in Alpha's Help Viewer with hyperlinks leading to the corresponding section or page.
This is a new functionality introduced in Alpha 9.1.

The Help submenus

The top items of the Help menu are self-explanatory: Readme, Quick Start and Alpha Manual.
The Installed Packages command opens a window containing hyperlinks to help files for all of the packages installed in your AlphaTcl library. 'Packages' include modes, menus, and other features that add functionality to Alpha.
The following items are submenus that give access to more specific areas and topics. They are described in the next sections.

Basic help

This submenu lets you quickly open some of the most frequently used help pages.
The Help Topics item opens a thematic table of contents of the available documentation. The Describe A Package… menu item gives a short description of what a package does, whereas the Read Help For A Package… menu item opens the complete help page related to this package.

Modes help

This submenu lists all the available modes and gives access to their documentation.

Menus help

This submenu lists all the available menus and gives access to their documentation.

Features help

This submenu lists all the available features and gives access to their documentation.

Developer help

This submenu contains items intended for AlphaTcl developers, with information regarding Alpha's core commands, embedded extensions, extra tools etc.
Documentation writers may also find useful information in the Doc Files Help and Help Text Marking pages.

Examples sandboxes

This submenu lets you quickly open sandboxes which are windows in which you can test the functionalities provided by a particular mode or package. Technically these windows are not files and are never marked as modified. None of the changes you make will affect the original content: if you close the window and then open it again, you will start with the same example as before.

Bug reports

The items in this submenu let you create a new bug report (aka ticket) or view an existing ticket. The menu item Display Version Info prints out useful information about the current state of your application: this information can be copied and pasted into a bug report.

Useful help links

Known problems

Please report any problem or bug you encounter in Alpha's Bug Tracker.

License and Disclaimer

Copyright (c) 2000-2021, the Alpha Community.
All rights reserved.
The Help Menu package is free software and distributed under the terms of the new BSD license:
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ALPHA COMMUNITY BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.