Affectionately known as Conan the Librarian, and with all due acknowlegement to Wierd Al Yankovic :^)  this script makes VMS Help and Text libraries accessable in the hypertext environment. It also provides a keyword search facility, both from a search dialog on relevant pages, and using a URL query string.

VMS Help

The system's default help library (as with command-line HELP) can be accessed using the URL

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe

To access a specific topic, say on the SHOW command, use something like

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/show

Qualifiers may be specified using either a leading slash or a leading underscore, as illustrated

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/show/symbol/qualifiers//all
  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/show/symbol/qualifiers/_all

In addition to the search dialog on relevant pages the help library and and major topics may be searched for a keyword using the URL field. The following example shows the string "management" being searched for first in the whole library, then just within the show topic.

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe?management
  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/show?management

Note that if another HELP script is using the "/help" path that "/cgi-bin/conan.exe" should also access the librian. Which means these forms will also work:

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe
  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/show
  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/show?management

Other Help Libraries

To access other than the default VMS help library merely specify the file using the URL-equivalent path as in the following example:

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/sys$common/syshlp/mailhelp.hlb

Text Libraries

The librarian also allows VMS Text Libraries to accessed and searched. Just provide the URL-equivalent path to the library.

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/sys$common/syslib/erflib.tlb

Text library modules accessed are returned as plain-text documents. This makes them particularly suitable for accessed programming language libraries as with the C header library (if on this system):

 /cgi-bin/conan.exe/sys$common/syslib/decc$rtldef.tlb

Other Librarian Functionality

To obtain an index of matching libraries explicitly activate the Conan script providing a wildcard file specification, as in the following example:

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/sys$common/syshlp/*.hlb

To obtain the library header information add a query string to the library file specification, as follows:

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/sys$common/syshlp/cgi-bin/conan.exelib.hlb?do=header

To provide a menu os possible functions add a query string to the library file specification, as follows:

  /cgi-bin/conan.exe/sys$common/syshlp/cgi-bin/conan.exelib.hlb?do=menu