In February, the new help system for Yale's principal multi-user computing platform went into production. MinervaHelp '95, which offers support for the Unix operating system used on Minerva, Mercury, and Morpheus, is a new, hypertext-based system which uses HTML, the basis for the World Wide Web, as its medium.
Using HTML allows for the intuitive linking of words or phrases in one document to other documents in the system or even hundreds of miles away. This makes it particularly useful for a help system - the user can simply navigate her way through the system with the click of a mouse or the press of a key.
MinervaHelp '95, as we like to call it, is located at the URL <http://minerva.cis.yale.edu/~consult>. You can access it with your favorite browser program (such as NCSA Mosaic or Netscape) or by typing help at the minerva% prompt if you have a Minerva account. While MinervaHelp '95 was written with the three Pantheon machines in mind, you might find it useful as a general source of Unix information. It is keyword searchable, and includes links to Unix "man pages" which contain detailed synopses of Unix commands and applications.
MinervaHelp '95 should be the first place you look for questions about using Minerva - it contains answers to many frequently- and not-so-frequently-asked questions, as well as ACS and C&IS policies that every user should be familiar with. Always check MinervaHelp's Common Questions and Answers section before mailing <consult@minerva> or talking to a CA - you may very well be able to find the answer to your question quickly and easily there.
The system has two basic sections. The first is "Information," which contains mostly information about the most popular locally used applications. Here you can find information about Unix basics, electronic mail (especially Pine - there's even a link to the University of Washington's Pine Information Center), transferring files between your computer and Minerva for subsequent mailing, methods of real-time communication (like talk and irc), and Usenet News (specifically, using Tin). We've also included information on methods of printing from Minerva (how many times have you wanted to print your e-mail?), security issues, programming resources, and publishing information on the Internet using HTML, much as we did with MinervaHelp itself. Information about the hardware on which Minerva and Friends reside is also included.
The "Resources" section contains links to the keyword searching broker for MinervaHelp, information specifically for new users, the newsgroup yale.minerva-users, and a few miscellaneous resources. This section could certainly be expanded - appreciate feedback about resources available on the Internet to which we could include links.
Comments or suggestions about the MinervaHelp '95 system should be mailed to