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Article #3971

Re: Are custom HELP libraries a good idea?

#3971
From: TLI%Sargas
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1987 16:27
32 lines
2186 bytes
	What I'm thinking of doing is turning the default around, i.e., putting
	the local stuff in as the root library, and letting the VMS stuff be
	accessible with "@".  I would of course define HLP$LIBRARY, so that if
	someone said "HELP COPY", they'd still get an answer.  But if they said
	"HELP", they'd get a much smaller list of stuff that makes
	sense to them. 
	Since everything would be accomplished by logical name definition, it 
	would seem an easy solution to maintain though VMS updates, etc.
	
	But somehow, it feels like a bad idea.
	
It is.  During upgrades, VMS patches HELPLIB.HLB.

We use the secondary libraries here for our local mods, and it seems
to work reasonably well.  Yes, it can be somewhat ugly, but you
needn't type the "@LOCAL" portion if the key is not in the main
library.

While I'm at it, I'd like to complain about third-party vendors whose
installation kits directly patch HELPLIB.HLB.  This tends to cause
system managers lots of pain the next time the system goes through a
major upgrade.  DEC gives you a clean copy of HELPLIB, and you now
have to go through and remove the third party modules....  This is
pretty silly.  The "correct" thing to do would be to let the manager
specify the library to add onto.  Thus, if you want a "true" top level
command you can get it, but for those of us with segmented, local
systems, none of the standard system files get modified.

Cheers,
Tony ;-)
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From: TLI%Sargas@USC-OBERON.ARPA.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: Re: Are custom HELP libraries a good idea?
Message-ID: <SUN-MM(195)+TOPSLIB(124).27-Mar-87.08:27:23.Sargas.Usc.Edu>
Date: Fri, 27-Mar-87 11:27:23 EST
Article-I.D.: <SUN-MM(195)+TOPSLIB(124).27-Mar-87.08:27:23.Sargas.Usc.Edu>
Posted: Fri Mar 27 11:27:23 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Mar-87 09:08:09 EST
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