Quick help for aliases

[Péter Köves]

Any chance of making it user customizable? For example, I have the following alias

alias cd=call c:\cmd\cd.btm

so quick help displays call c:\cmd\cd.btm --- not very helpful.

An easy way of doing the customization would be to check for another alias of the form qh_alias-name and display its value if present. Then I could

alias qh_cd=`cd [ /P | /A ] [ /N ] [ /? | /H ] [ ~ | - | ? | path ]`

to get some useful help. Would be nice---I always forget that I implemented the ? special character for the path (uses @getfolder to get a directory to cd to).

Obviously one can come up with other mechanisms to associate the custom help. For example, a command aliashelp alias=help-text; but this would need an internal table of help texts and a /R style load mechanism.

My suggestion above probably requires the least amount of modification to TCC. In addtion, this could also work for anything, not just aliases. You could check for the alias qh_name where name would be the cmd/btm/bat/exe/executable-extension/etc name with extension but without path.

 

[rconn]

> Any chance of making it user customizable? For example, I have the
> following alias
>
> alias cd=call c:\cmd\cd.btm
>
> so quick help displays call c:\cmd\cd.btm --- not very helpful.
>
> An easy way of doing the customization would be to check for another alias
> of the form qh_alias-name and display its value if present. Then I could
>
> alias qh_cd=`cd [ /P | /A ] [ /N ] [ /? | /H ] [ ~ | - | ? | path ]`
>
> to get some useful help. Would be nice---I always forget that I
> implemented the ? special character for the path (uses @getfolder to get a
> directory to cd to).

I'll add it to the suggestion list for v11.

Rex Conn
JP Software

 

[Charles Dye]

Alternatively, you could read quickhelp from a text file (and fall back on the current behavior if no matching command is found in that file.) That way, users could easily customize quickhelp for batch files, external utilities, or even internal commands, if they wish.

 

[Péter Köves]

... read quickhelp from a text file...

This makes sense too---as I said lots of alternatives for implementation. This then leads to asking support for optional extra CHM file(s) (perhaps pointed to by an INI file directive). These could be searched before the standard help file. Then users who have CHM build capability/inclination could add full custom help as well.