Using the Graphical help reader in IRAF
October 15th, 2004 by admin
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p>Many people still type “help display” or what have you when they are trying to get info on an iraf package. There is a much better way in the latest versions of IRAF. Instead of help do this:
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help dev=gui
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p>The dev=gui line is key, which opens up the help browser. You must be running IRAF in an xgterm for this to work. You can also type help dev=gui taskname and get help on a specific task or package.
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p>You can also do an epar help and set the default behavior of device to gui so that you don’t have to type dev=gui ever again.
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p>Once you use the graphical help browser you won’t go back. I often keep an instance of IRAF running that is always running xhelp, so I can read the documentation while I’m fiddling with parameters and such.
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