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wolfram-mathematicamathematica-frontend

Mathematica Help Browser from Mathematica 5 in new versions of Mathematica

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?

Solution

  • 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.