Summary: you can use another viewer, but you will not get the interactive experience.
A single click on such an item will locate and show the corresponding part of the documentation.
The help viewer keeps a history of vistited documents; the "back" button returns to the previous document(s). The "home" button returns you to the top introduction document.
Most documents contain extra navigation buttons located at the beginning of the document. The "prev" (left arrow) and "next" (right arrow) buttons lead you to the previous/next chapter in the same hierarchy level of the documentation. The "up" (up arrow) button leads you back to the next higher level.
Cross references within this documentation usually include the title of the referenced section or chapter enclosed in quotation marks (e.g., see "What's new in the documentation").
Lowercase italic type represents a variable,
a placeholder for the text you actually enter.
A variable can consist of different characters each time you make the entry.
A typical example would be: "someArray at:
index".
Italic type is also used when some term is defined in the text, as in:
"an executable example is a code fragment that is executed
when clicked upon".
Smalltalk code, constants, class names etc. are identified by a courier font, such as
... the UndefinedObject
class ...
or
... the #at:put:
selector ...
This is also true for code fragments or example expressions such as:
Transcript showCR:'hello world'
To distinguish symbols and message selectors from regular strings or variable names, these are typically prefixed by a "#" character, as in:
... the #new
-message creates a new instance ...
or a "#" character followed by a quoted string, as in:
... the #'foo_bar'
-message does this and that ...
Filenames are also shown in a monospaced font, but have additional
quotes around them, as in "/usr/lib/smalltalk/smalltalk.rc"
.
Keys that are labeled on your keyboard with more than one character,
such as the "RETURN" key,
are identified by all uppercase letters in a bold courier font.
Keys that you are to press simultaneously or in succession
are linked with a hyphen (e.g., press "SHIFT-ALT-d").
If multiple keys are to be pressed in sequence, no hyphen is shown
(e.g., as in "COMPOSE a *").
Like other code fragments, executable examples are layed out in a fixed font
but highlighted with a different (darkened red) color.
(If you have problems with red/green colors, please change the color settings in the help viewers
settings dialog.)
Transcript topView raise.
Transcript showCR:'hello world'
The help viewer will catch errors occurring in those examples and
show a warnBox.
Examples which produce such an
error by purpose (to demonstrate error behavior),
can also be copied into a workspace and executed there (right-click on the example's text
to get a popUp-menu).
Try:
Programmed halts and breakpoints will bring you directly into the debugger.
5 / (3 - 3)
Try also:
Executable examples are a special feature of the ST/X help viewer.
Clicking on them will have no effect if you use Firefox, IE, Safari or any other
HTML reader.
self halt
An example's text can also be copied to a workspace as follows:
alternatively, the "Open Workspace on Example's Text" menu item will open a new workspace which contains the example.
In the workspace, you may want to try variations of the example (try different parameters, for example).
SECURITY WARNING:
Be careful with documents provided by untrusted people:Since the examples are executed by your running smalltalk system, a bad guy can place example code into a document, which could be harmful to your (smalltalk-) system.
Always read and understand what is going on the code example, before executing it.
In the help viewer, you can disable example execution, to avoid executing any code by unintended clicks.In non-Smalltalk HTML readers, command execution is not possible and there is no danger whatsoever with examples.
For example:
Click
here to open a browser.
Or click
here to ask for a class and open a browser there.
Click here
here, to browse the ApplicationModel class.
The above security warning also applies to this type of code execution.
or:
For these fillout forms, the same security dangers are to be considered as for executable examples (even more, since you do not see the underlying code). Therefore, these can also be disabled in the help viewer when reading untrusted documents. If disabled, the helpviewer will show the underlying code in a box instead.
Read the SECURITY WARNING aboveThe ST/X documents as provided here were of course written with great care to avoid doing any harm to your smalltalk environment - however, even these documents could have been modified by someone else at the time you read them...
Copyright © 1995-2009 Claus Gittinger Development & Consulting, all rights reserved
Copyright © 1996-2009 eXept Software AG