Small trick for add-in documentation/help text to appear in _this.display

[mamo]

Dear community,

this is just to share with you a minor trick to enhance the documentation of add-ins.

An add-in documentation text file can be made to appear in the own window of the object the add-in is registered to once the user provides a string such as "help" or just "?" as the first argument when calling the add-in from the command line, i.e., "myequation.myaddin ?". See program sniplet below.

Best, mamo

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' ... other parts of the addin programme %addindoc=@addinspath+"\addindir\addinname.txt" 'path of the add-in documentation text file %helpargs="help ?" 'one of these strings as first argument would trigger the display of the help text %tmptxt=_$tmptxt 'name for the temportary text object %arg1=@word(lower(@trim(%args)), 1) if @wfind(%helpargs, arg1) then text {%tmptxt} {%tmptxt}.append(file) %addindoc _this.display {%tmptxt} delete {%tmptxt} stop endif ' ... other parts of the addin programme

[tvonbrasch]

Great idea, really useful.


Here is an alternative way of opening an add-in documentation file. may be useful if the file is in pdf or another file format. it is assumed that the file is located in the same folder as the add-in:

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' ... other parts of the addin programme %about="addin_about.pdf" if @upper(%0)="HELP" or %0="?" then setmaxerrs 10 %runpath=@runpath shell(t=3) {%runpath}\{%about} stop endif ' ... other parts of the addin programme

Thomas