Conan Help

Affectionately known as Conan The Librarian, and with acknowlegement and all due respect to Wierd Al Yankovic :^) this script makes VMS Help and Text libraries accessable in the web environment. It also provides a keyword search facility, both from a search dialog on relevant pages, and using a URL query string.

VMS Help

The system's default help library (as with command-line HELP) can be accessed using the URL
  /help
To access a specific topic, say on the SHOW command, use something like
  /help/show
Qualifiers may be specified using either a leading slash or a leading underscore, as illustrated
  /help/show/symbol/qualifiers//all
  /help/show/symbol/qualifiers/_all
In addition to the search dialog on relevant pages the help library and and major topics may be searched for a keyword using the URL field. The following example shows the string "management" being searched for first in the whole library, then just within the show topic.
  /help?management
  /help/show?management
Note that if another HELP script is using the "/help" path that "/conan" should also access the librarian. Which means these forms will also work:
  /conan
  /conan/show
  /conan/show?management

Other Help Libraries

To access other than the default VMS help library merely specify the file using the URL-equivalent path as in the following example:
  /help/sys$common/syshlp/mailhelp.hlb

Text Libraries

The librarian also allows VMS Text Libraries to accessed and searched. Just provide the URL-equivalent path to the library.
  /conan/sys$common/syslib/erflib.tlb
Text library modules accessed are returned as plain-text documents. This makes them particularly suitable for accessed programming language libraries as with the C header library (if on this system):
 /conan/sys$common/syslib/decc$rtldef.tlb

Other Librarian Functionality

To obtain an index of matching libraries explicitly activate the Conan script providing a wildcard file specification, as in the following example:
  /conan/sys$common/syshlp/*.hlb
To obtain the library header information add a query string to the library file specification, as follows:
  /conan/sys$common/syshlp/helplib.hlb?do=header
To provide a menu os possible functions add a query string to the library file specification, as follows:
  /conan/sys$common/syshlp/helplib.hlb?do=menu