Re: recent changes to help functions

[Søren Hauberg]

fre, 23 01 2009 kl. 12:50 -0500, skrev John W. Eaton:
> Since your original patch for converting the help system to .m files
> was done back in March 2008, the following changes in help.cc might
> have been lost:

Yeah, I was fearing that :-(

> 2008-08-19  David Bateman  <address@hidden>
> 
>       * load-path.cc (load-path::do_find_dir (const std:string&) const)):
>       Method to find a directory on the load-path corresponding to the
>       argument.
>       * load-path.h (load-path::do_find_dir (const std:string&) const),
>       load-path::find_dir (const std::string&) const): New methods.
>       * utils.cc (std::string contents_file_in_path (const std::string&)):
>       New function.
>       * utils.h  (std::string contents_file_in_path (const std::string&)): 
>       Declare it.
>       * help.cc (static bool raw_help_from_file (const std::string&,
>       std::string&, std::string&, bool&)): Also check is requested
>       argument is a directory and contains the file Contents.m.

It seems that these changes mostly work as-is. However, I think it would
be better to move this code directly into 'help.m'. That would IMHO make
the code simpler. I'm currently spending all my time on grading exams,
so I don't think I'll have any time to look at this till next week.

> 2008-08-04  John W. Eaton  <address@hidden>
> 
>       * octave.cc (initialize_pathsearch): Fix usage of
>       file_ops::dir_sep_str.
>       * help.cc (Flookfor): Likewise.
>       * dirfns.cc (Ffilesep): Likewise.
>       (Fautoload): Likewise.

I'm not sure what this change does, and how it affects the current
implementation.

> 2008-05-04  John W. Eaton  <address@hidden>
> 
>       * help.cc (make_name_list): Call symbol_table::global_variable_names
>       and symbol_table::top_level_variable_names instead of passing
>       scope to symbol_table::variable_names.

Same comment as above.

> I also see that things like
> 
>   help @a/a
> 
> are not working now, and they did before the switch to the .m file
> help.

I'm somewhat surprised that this no longer works. I was hoping this
change would have been independent of my changes.

Anyway, I'll look into these changes, but it won't be until some time
next week :-(

Soren