Appendix A: Where to Get Further Information

The document “Summary of TUTOR Commands and System Variables” by Elaine Avner lists each TUTOR command, gives the basic form of the tag, and notes any restrictions such as maximum number of arguments or maximum length of names. Lesson “aids” available on PLATO provides detailed interactive descriptions of each command, as well as a wealth of other information useful to authors.

Lesson “notes” on PLATO provides a forum for discussing user problems. You can write notes to ask questions or to suggest new features that would be helpful in your work. You can read notes written by other users, including replies to your notes. Replies to programming questions generally appear within one day. (For faster service, use TERM-consult.) An extremely important section of “notes” is the list of announcements of new TUTOR features. Check this section regularly for announcements of new TUTOR capabilities. The announcements are followed within a few days by detailed descriptions in “aids”.

Sometimes “notes” will announce a change in the TUTOR language involving an automatic conversion of existing lessons. For example, at one time there were several different commands (-line-, -liner-, -figure-, and -figuref-) which did what -draw- now does. When -draw- was implemented, all existing PLATO lessons were run through an automatic conversion routine to change the old commands into appropriate -drawcommands. It is probable that other such refinements will be made in the future. Therefore, be sure to read notes and aids regularly.