This is an example of the way that the help page appears. We get an annotated explanation of the gadgets on the page and an explanation of what each of the commands does. The user reads the documentation and decides that the Create Subclass command is appropriate. Selecting this command from within the help page executes the command as if it had been invoked on the original page....
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Help

Help (all possible commands)

General help on the current display:

Help on the available menu bar commands:

Home
Takes you to the network services home page.
Make Comment
Prompts you to type in a comment which is then mailed to the developers.
Preferences
Gives you a form that allows you to edit the available user preference options.
(Save all and quit session):
Saves all of the unsaved ontologies either to the group that they came from if their source is know, or to your current group if they are newly created.
Reload (Reload):
Reloads the current page. This is useful if you have edited something, and you use the back key, window history, or GO menu to go back in time. This command will let you reload the page (if things have changed) without telling the browser to reload all of the images too.
(Ontology Library):
Takes you to page that lists the contents of the ontology library.
(Parent Ontology):
Takes you to page for the ontology in which the current frame was defined.
(Suppress edit gadgets):
Toggles the read-only/read-write status of this page so that all of the edit gadgets disappear. Worked example.
Can't Undo (Can't Undo):
Says you can't undo the last operation.
Dictionary (Dictionary):
Takes you to the dictionary server that you specified in your user preferences.
(Documentation):
Takes you to the home page for the ontology editor's documentation. This includes manuals and a guided tour.
(EMail Bug Report):
Gives you a form that will allow you to send a bug report.
(Find Name):
Prompts you for a name to look for in all of the ontologies that are currently loaded into the ontology editor. Any name will match this search, whether it is the name of a function, relation, instance, class, or axiom. If there are multiple possible matches, a page showing these possibilities will be shown. If there is only one possible match, you will be taken to the page showing that definition.

Click here for a worked example. In any Find command you can enter a wildcarded pattern of things to find. Context-specific filtering occurs so that the only matches that are found are those that are appropriate to the context. Thus, if you are finding a class name, only existing class names will be found as matches. Searches are case independent. The Find facility is a superset of what you already may be accustomed to in "completion" features in other systems. The pattern may contain:

  • A sequence of alphabetics, which are required to match to the string in question.
  • A multi-character wildcard *, which will match to zero or more characters.
  • A single character wildcard ?, which will match to exactly one character.
  • Escaped wildcard characters: \* or \?.
There is no limit to the number of wildcard characters that can be supplied in a pattern. Searches all make initial substring matches, so you will get "completion" behavior simply by typing in an initial substring.

Some examples:

Hello
Will match to any word beginning with the string "HELLO"
*Hello
Will match to any word containing the string "HELLO". This is equivalent to *Hello*.
Hel?o
Will match to any word beginning with the string "HEL", having any character after that and then having "O" after it.

If the Find command finds more possibilities than the threshold that you specified in your user preferences, ellipses ("...") will be displayed and a new button labeled Find All will be displayed. If you click on the Find All button, all possible matches will be found and displayed, however many there may be. If you click on the ellipsis mark, the number of items displayed will grow by a number specified by your user preferences. If you click on a caret button, the word following the caret will be inserted into the typein box.

(Help):
Shows help for the current page. Any available buttons on the current page will be explained as well as general help being given on the contents of the current page.
: :
EMails the current frame. The address to which the frame is EMailed is determined by your user preferences. The default will prompt you for an address. You can also set your preferences so that definitions will always be mailed to you directly. See also the Save [Frame] to File command. The definition that is mailed to you is not the page that you see, it is the Ontolingua source code definition of the frame. This definition will conspicuously not include any references to inherited values, slots or facets.
: :
Saves the current frame to a file in the ontology editor's frame library. You can load such a saved frame with the Load Definition command. See also the EMail [*] command. The file created by the save command will be authored (owned) by you and have the group ownership that you specify in the dialogue.
: :
Saves the current frame to a file. You can load such a saved frame with the Load Frame command. See also the EMail [Frame] command.
: :
Gives you a blank form in which you can create a new slot (binary function or relation) on the current class to add to the current ontology. You are prompted for the name of the new slot, its documentation string and its domain and range class(es). The domain class defaults to the current class. If you want simultaneously to define an inverse slot then you must supply a name for the inverse slot and its documentation in the appropriate boxes.
Slots can be either Functions or Relations. If you want the slot to be single-valued, i.e. a function, then you should click in the "Single Valued" checkbox. The name for the new slot (and inverse slot) must be unique in the current ontology and its included ontologies. Supplying multiple domain classes will define a slot with a disjunctive domain. Supplying multiple range classes will specify a disjunctive range.
Click here for a worked example.
: :
Gives you a blank form in which you can create a new instance of the current class to add to the current ontology. You are prompted for the name of the new instance, its documentation string and the classes of which the new instance is to be a direct instance (defaulting to the current class). You can provide multiple classes separated by whitespace if you want the instance to be a direct instance of multiple classes. The name for the new instance must be unique in the current ontology and its included ontologies. Here is a worked example.
: :
Gives you a blank form in which you can create a new subclass of the current class to add to the current ontology. You are prompted for the name of the new class, its documentation string and its direct superclasses (defaulting to just the current class). The name for the new class must be unique in the current ontology and its included ontologies. Click here for a worked example.
: :
Shows you the translation of the current definition into a target system (such as KIF, LOOM, Epikit, or CLIPS) that you specify.
: :
Shows a browser for the current frame in the current ontology that lets you open and close subtrees of the class/ instance hierarchy accessible in this ontology.
: :
Deletes the current frame from the current ontology. References to this frame in other frames and axioms are not removed so you may need to do some fixing up when you delete a frame. If there are references to the frame you have just deleted, the now-deleted frame name will appear in the list of undefined symbols when you execute the "Analyze Ontology" command.
: :
Analyzes the current frame, showing any warnings that Ontolingua generates when loading the definition and any other interesting debugging hints that it can give you. All slots, slot values, facet, and facet values are checked to make sure that they conform to the constraints that apply (eg. domain, range, slot value type and cardinality constraints).
: :
Shows all of the ontologies that can see the current definition.
: :
Shows all of the other definitions that reference the current definition.
: :
Gives you a dialogue that allows you to create a copy of the current frame. The form prompts you for a name for the new frame and for the ontology into which it is to be put. Only ontologies to which you have write access will be shown in the ontology menu. It defaults to the current ontology. The name of the new frame must be different from any existing definition name within the ontologies included by the ontology into which the copy is to be placed. Use the FIND button to make sure that the name is unique.