Adding online help for commands

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Rodgers
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Sep 15, 2004 4:44 pm
Location: University of California, Davis

Adding online help for commands

Post by Rodgers » Sun Aug 28, 2005 10:07 pm

I am wondering how difficult it is to add online manual within OpenSees.

Right now a "help" command will display the DOS commands, wouldn't it be nice if it can display the commands available for OpenSees?

The other fancy gymmic is the autocompletion of commands, I found it difficult to remember the commands exactly as it is.

One more feature is to have OpenSees to save commands history into a file.
It is not what you can do, it is what you can dream!

silvia
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Post by silvia » Mon Aug 29, 2005 12:59 pm

i'll answer one item at at time:
I am wondering how difficult it is to add online manual within OpenSees.
There is a Tcl editor developed by Stanford researchers, but i don't know it is is still being supported and updated. This editor does have help files.
the on-line manual is at:
http://opensees.berkeley.edu/OpenSees/m ... sermanual/
Right now a "help" command will display the DOS commands, wouldn't it be nice if it can display the commands available for OpenSees?
they are in the above manual
The other fancy gymmic is the autocompletion of commands, I found it difficult to remember the commands exactly as it is.
This is why you should use variables and cut and paste from the manual.
Also, if you type the command, it does tell you what the arguments should be, typically.
There is a Tcl editor developed by Stanford researchers, but i don't know it is is still being supported and updated.
One more feature is to have OpenSees to save commands history into a file.
You really should use a script rather than using the command line.
An output file, however, would be handy, yes.
Silvia Mazzoni, PhD
Structural Consultant
Degenkolb Engineers
235 Montgomery Street, Suite 500
San Francisco, CA. 94104

Rodgers
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Sep 15, 2004 4:44 pm
Location: University of California, Davis

Post by Rodgers » Wed Aug 31, 2005 9:22 am

I guess what I am really interested in is some kind of automatic documentation feature.

All the OpenSees Tcl commands are provided by Tcl_AddCommand(maybe not this exact name), and in the body of the command implementation there are several lines of C/C++ codes that parses the input and put them into the corresponding variables.

Is it possible to scan these codes and build an accurate description for each command? This may not be that important for current commands because they've already been documented pretty well. Nevertheless if this gadget is available then the maintenance of that Standford tool may become much easier.
It is not what you can do, it is what you can dream!

berktaftali
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Jul 02, 2004 6:10 am
Location: Computers and Structures, Inc.

Re: Adding online help for commands

Post by berktaftali » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:40 pm

Rodgers wrote:One more feature is to have OpenSees to save commands history into a file.
I believe this is possible with the following undocumented :shock: command:

Code: Select all

logFile $fileName
Hope this helps...
Berk Taftali
Georgia Institute of Technology
Ph.D. Candidate, Structural Engineering, Mechanics, and Materials
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Atlanta, GA 30332 USA
Email: gte994y@mail.gatech.edu

Rodgers
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Sep 15, 2004 4:44 pm
Location: University of California, Davis

Post by Rodgers » Tue Sep 06, 2005 2:42 pm

see, if we have a command scanning tool, I will be able to find out that there is actually this "logFile" command.
It is not what you can do, it is what you can dream!

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