THELP - Turbo HELP Utility

    THELP is a permanently resident HELP utility which attempts to partially
replace the much maligned Turbo manual.  THELP is written in the TurboPascal
language itsself.

    Many people have complained that the Turbo Pascal manual, being bound
like a paper back, will not lie flat on the desk and is, therefore, hard to
use.  THELP partially alleviates this problem by making the manual unnecessary
for all but the most difficult problem.

    To use run the THELP program before entering Turbo; this can easily be done
at boot up if desired.  THELP will install itsself, prompting with a reminder of
how to enter the program.  (THELP should only be installed once!)  At any time
when in TurboPascal (actually it works any time) that the user has a question
about the format of a Pascal expression, a question about the editor, etc., merely
enter Alt-R to wake up the online help.  THELP, seeing the Alt-R, will open a
large window on the screen and present a table of contents.  By selecting
various options, the user can usually vector himself to an example, demonstrating
the answer to his question.  To return to a higher level than one is enter
Escape.  Entering escape at the table of contents level will close the window,
replacing whatever was there and return the user to his application undisturbed.

    THELP, besides being a very useful utility, is a good example of how
to write permanently resident interrupt borrower type software in TurboPascal.
See the LASTCOM program for more detail.

    Note that the help on the editor commands list two choices for every command.
The first choice is the "WordStar" configuration (more or less the way it
comes from Borland).  The second list describes the commands installed at
the Greenville Texas PC Club.  If neither list conforms to the way the user
has his Turbo editor installed, he has two choices: reinstall his editor to
match one or the other lists or change the source code to match his
installation and recompile.  If the user does change the source code, it is
recommended that he change the right list, since the left list is more
"standard".

    Note further that THELP could have been made faster in opening and
closing the screen windows by accessing display memory directly; however,
the portability gained by using BIOS calls was deemed more important.