5

I remember that someone from WRI stated in the official newsgroup that Mathematica 7 still has a working old-fashioned Mathematica Help Browser from Mathematica 5 for compatibility purposes. But I can not find the post where the code for invoking it is given.

How to invoke and use this legacy Help Browser in new versions of Mathematica?

Alexey Popkov
  • 9,355
  • 4
  • 42
  • 93
  • 3
    I know it is not exactly what you are asking for, but remember you have http://reference.wolfram.com/legacy/index.html at hand – Dr. belisarius Apr 25 '11 at 14:57

2 Answers2

1

The old browser will show up if you try to look at documentation for packages that were written in the old format. From the main documentation page, click 'Add-Ons and Packages' at the very bottom-left, and then click on the old package name. Based on what I have installed, it looks like the old packages will have a little orange square in front of them, instead of a triangle that shows/hides additional information.

The old browser is only used for old documentation.

I assume you're aware of the 'Function Navigator' and 'Virtual Book' which provide alternate ways of navigating the new documentation.

Brett Champion
  • 8,497
  • 1
  • 27
  • 44
  • Thank you! But there should also be a programmatic way to launch the Help Browser and even open a specific documentation page in it. How this can be done? – Alexey Popkov Apr 25 '11 at 14:40
  • 1
    One way I just found myself looking on the Cell expression of a cell with little orange square: ``ButtonBox[" »", BaseStyle -> "Link", Evaluator -> Automatic, ButtonFunction :> (PacletManager`Package`helpBrowserLookup[#] & ), ButtonData -> "Help Browser"]`` – Alexey Popkov Apr 25 '11 at 14:57
  • For new documentation you can use `SystemOpen["paclet:ref/NMinimize"]`. (I checked this on OS X using 8.0.1.) – Brett Champion Apr 25 '11 at 14:58
  • 1
    Perhaps this MathGroup [link](http://forums.wolfram.com/mathgroup/archive/2010/Dec/msg00066.html) on 'How to bring up specific doc page programmatically' might be of interest? In particular the reply of John Fultz. – 681234 Apr 25 '11 at 17:24
1

At this moment I have found two ways to invoke the legacy Help Browser by clicking a button:

DisplayForm@ButtonBox["Preface",
    BaseStyle -> "AddOnsLinkText",
    Active -> True,
    ButtonData :> {"PCT Preface", None}]

and

DisplayForm@
 ButtonBox[" »", BaseStyle -> "Link", Evaluator -> Automatic, 
  ButtonFunction :> (PacletManager`Package`helpBrowserLookup[#] &), 
  ButtonData -> "Help Browser"]

I found that we have the global option HelpBrowserSettings that specifies settings for the legacy Help Browser.

And we still have working functions HelpBrowserLookup and HelpBrowserNotebook (now undocumented) and command FrontEndTokenExecute["RebuildHelpIndex"] for rebuilding the help index of the legacy Help Browser.

Alexey Popkov
  • 9,355
  • 4
  • 42
  • 93