Help Menu

The Help Menu displays commands that display documentation or other information about the currently selected object or about the system. The commands on the menu are:

• Help on Selected Symbol -- Display the html page for the currently selected symbol. If no help page exists, displays a dialog saying that. If multiple pages exist (because, e.g., the symbol names more than one type of object), a dialog displaying the choices appears. This and some of the other Help Menu commands display help in your default HTML browser program by calling the function invoke-html-browser.

• Help on Selected Dialog -- Displays the documentation for the selected dialog.

• Tree of Knowledge -- This command displays the Allegro Tree of Knowledge dialog, which displays a map to the available documentation in outline format.

• Allegro CL Documentation -- This command displays, in an HTML Browser, the introduction to the Allegro CL documentation, introduction.htm.

• ANSI Common Lisp -- This command displays in an HTML Browser introduction page of the ANSI CL Spec (located in the ansicl/ subdirectory of the Allegro Directory).

• Symbol Index -- This command displays, in an HTML Browser, the index to the Allegro CL documentation, index.htm. (The index lists all documented symbols along with other material.)

• Permuted Index -- This command displays, in an HTML Browser, the permuted index to the Allegro CL documentation, permuted-index.htm. This indexes each symbol and topic under each "word" of the symbol name or topic phrase. For example, the symbol effective-background-color can be found alphabetized by background-color and color in addition to effective-background-color.

• Shortcut Keys -- Display the Shortcut Keys dialog showing shortcut keys.

• Interactive IDE Intro -- Run a high-level interactive introduction to the variety of development tools that are available in the IDE.

• The Navigator -- Display the Navigator dialog.

• Common Graphics Examples -- Display the Navigator dialog open to the Examples tab.

• Interface Builder Tutorial -- Displays the Navigator dialog open to the Tutorial tab.

• Quick Symbol Info -- Prints information about the currently-selected symbol to the status bar of the Project Window and (unless the selected symbol is in the Debug Window) to the Debug Window.

• Quick Class Info -- Prints information about the currently selected symbol (which should name a class) to the status bar of the Project Window and (unless the selected symbol is in the Debug Window) to the Debug Window.

• Describe Selected Object -- Print to the Debug window the results of applying describe to the current selection.

• Symbol Doc String -- Prints the Function documentation string, if any, to the Debug window. Note that most Allegro CL and IDE objects do not have documentation strings.

• Download Patches -- This item is no longer on the Help menu. See Install | New Patches

• Write a Bug Report -- Displays a dialog allowing you to choose what processes to get backtraces for, asks additional questions about what to include, and then allows you to choose a filename for the bug report file. The file, when written, can be included in a problem report to technical support (see Reporting bugs in introduction.htm for where to send bug reports).

• Connect to franz.com -- Displays the Franz Inc. home page (which has technical as well as marketing and sales information) in a browser.

• About Allegro CL -- Displays a dialog with information about the current version of Allegro CL.

Copyright (c) 1998-2016, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
This page was not revised from the 8.1 page.
Created 2010.1.21.