gnuplot-bugs

[Gnuplot-bugs] gnuplot help

[Michael K. B. <mk...@cy...>]

Comment on Gnuplot help: This may seem like an incredibly stupid 
question to some, but why does the online 'help help' description only 
tell you "you may go back one level to the previous topic" without 
telling you HOW to do so?  This is the first place I went so I could 
navigate help, and I could not find the answer anywhere, including a web 
search.  I ended discovering <return> only after trying a long list of 
other 'obvious' possibilities like typing 'back', 'up', 'previous' ^d, 
^p, '^', <up-arrow>, etc., and finally in frustration I hit a <return> 
only to discover it worked.

For completeness sake the help on help should just add 'by entering an 
empty line' or something similar to the end of the "you may go back..." 
sentence.

Re: [Gnuplot-bugs] gnuplot help

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Michael K. Brown wrote:
> Comment on Gnuplot help: This may seem like an incredibly stupid 
> question to some, but why does the online 'help help' description only 
> tell you "you may go back one level to the previous topic" without 
> telling you HOW to do so? 

I would guess that's mainly because the text doesn't know what kind of 
program is presenting it, so it cannot generally know how "go up one 
level" is actually implemented.  gnuplot.gih is displayed by gnuplot 
itself, and only there does the "just type return" method actually work. 
  Other versions of the documentation are handled by the Windows HELP 
file system, the GNU info system and others, and each has its own method 
of doing this (some may not even have one at all).