Contextual Help

With over 550 built-in operations and functions, it can be difficult to remember the input and output parameters of them all. Fortunately Igor provides contextual help menus (right-click menu on Windows, control-click on Macintosh) in the procedure windows:

contextual menu showing "Help for NewPath" and "Insert NewPath Template" items (among others)

Choosing "Help for NewPath" opens a help window with detailed documentation:

Excerpt of NewPath help file text

Choosing "Insert NewPath Template" inserts text for you to edit appropriately: 

NewPath [/C/M=messageStr /O/Q/Z] pathName  [, pathToFolderStr]
The square brackets indicate optional parameters. You will replace the template parameters with the names of your own strings and variables: 
String pathToFolder= "HD:folder:subfolder"
NewPath/C/O/M="locate top folder" top, pathToFolder

In addition to the contextual menus, the procedure windows provide a Templates popup menu for inserting any command´s template:

shows selection of the Insert Template->Flow Control->strswitch template
shows the inserted multiple-line strswitch template

The Procedures popup menu is a navigation aid: it jumps to any user-defined function, macro, or menu definition that exists in the window (or in all windows if the Alt or option key is held down):

Procedures menu showing list of user functions and menu definitions

These contextual programming aids are a small part of the many forms of helpful information provided by Igor.

Last updated: Tuesday, December 7, 2004