MacAnova Documentation

On line help

MacAnova has several kinds of documenation available. The first is on-line help from within MacAnova itself by use of the help() or guihelp() commands. help(foo) will search for topic foo in all files in the variable HELPFILES and then print the help in the output window. (HELPFILES is initialized to contain all the MacAnova standard help, but you can add your own if necessary.) guihelp(foo) will look for help on topic foo and then display the help in a browser. The browser help is just a reformatted version of what can be obtained via help(), but the browser version has the advantage that it has many links so that you can jump easily between topics.

Introduction to MacAnova

This is a primer for MacAnova, gently introduction topics and giving many examples. It was current for MacAnova 4.12 Release 2, but nearly everything is still relevant for new versions.

If you installed the documentation with MacAnova, then you should have this document. On Windows or Linux, go to the directory where you installed MacAnova, then go down through the SharedSupport, docs, and pdf directories. The Introduction is Intro.pdf. On the Macintosh, there should be a documentation folder installed with MacAnova; go down into the docs folder, and Intro.pdf should be there.

MacAnova Users' Guide

This is much more comprehensive than the Introduction document, but not as up to date, being current for version 4.07. The Users' Guide comes as 11 separate chapters and 6 appendices (titled manchp03.pdf or manapdxc.pdf, etc). The regular chapters are still very useful, but the appendices on Windows- or Macintosh-specific topics are terribly out of date.

If you installed the documentation with MacAnova, then you should have the Users' Guide. On Windows or Linux, go to the directory where you installed MacAnova, then go down through the SharedSupport, docs, and pdf directories. On the Macintosh, there should be a documentation folder installed with MacAnova; go down into the docs folder to find the Users' Guide.

MacAnova Reference Manual

Finally, there is the Reference Manual, which is a "printed" version of the information available from the help files via help() or guihelp(). This document is rather large (over 800 pages).

If you installed the documentation with MacAnova, then you should have the MacAnova Reference. On Windows or Linux, go to the directory where you installed MacAnova, then go down through the SharedSupport, docs, and pdf directories. On the Macintosh, there should be a documentation folder installed with MacAnova; go down into the docs folder to find the Users' Guide.