[Info-vax] VMS Help, man pages and info, was: Re: Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Paul Sture]

In article <kes0gr$e2m$1 at news.albasani.net>,
 Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:

> Simon Clubley wrote 2013-02-05 21:46:
> 
> > VMS help only gives you a really basic summary of each command option;
> > with few exceptions it does not give you any real overview or conceptual
> > information. About the only thing you can do with VMS help is to double
> > check on the syntax or name of a qualifier before you use it.

The VMS help pages got better over time.  In earlier versions of VMS 
(I'm going back to V6/V7? and before), the HELP often had different 
wording and was not as complete as the documentation.  Somewhere in the 
V6 to V7 timeframe, that was addressed and you no longer needed to check 
with the dead tree or CD version for the full explanation.

> Well, that *very* much depend on *what* you are reading !
> 
> The VMS help pages for Rdb (and it's tools) are very complete and
> usualy with 10-15 full and commented examples for each command/switch.

With a VMS background, examples were the first thing I missed in man 
pages.

-- 
Paul Sture