m.help does not work

[henrikjacobsenfys]

I am using version 0.4.0.
For example

from pace_neutrons import Matlab
m = Matlab()

m.help('plot')

gives the following

Warning: herbert_config has been rendered obsolete and has been removed. 
All features have moved to hor_config
!==================================================================!
!          ISIS utilities for visualization and analysis           !
!                   of neutron spectroscopy data                   !
!                          Herbert 4.0.0                           !
!------------------------------------------------------------------!
Warning: herbert_config has been rendered obsolete and has been removed. 
All features have moved to hor_config
!==================================================================!
!                           Horace 4.0.0                           !
!------------------------------------------------------------------!
!   Visualisation of multi-dimensional neutron spectroscopy data   !
!                                                                  !
!           R.A. Ewings, A. Buts, M.D. Le, J van Duijn,            !
!                  I. Bustinduy, and T.G. Perring                  !
!                                                                  !
!             Nucl. Inst. Meth. A 834, 132-142 (2016)              !
!                                                                  !
!           http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2016.07.036           !
!------------------------------------------------------------------!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
RuntimeError                              Traceback (most recent call last)
Cell In[11], [line 4](vscode-notebook-cell:?execution_count=11&line=4)
      [1](vscode-notebook-cell:?execution_count=11&line=1) from pace_neutrons import Matlab
      [2](vscode-notebook-cell:?execution_count=11&line=2) m = Matlab()
----> [4](vscode-notebook-cell:?execution_count=11&line=4) m.help('plot')

File c:\Users\henrikjacobsen3\AppData\Local\miniforge3\envs\pace_env\lib\site-packages\libpymcr\Matlab.py:72, in NamespaceWrapper.__call__(self, *args, **kwargs)
     [70](file:///C:/Users/henrikjacobsen3/AppData/Local/miniforge3/envs/pace_env/lib/site-packages/libpymcr/Matlab.py:70) args += sum(kwargs.items(), ())
     [71](file:///C:/Users/henrikjacobsen3/AppData/Local/miniforge3/envs/pace_env/lib/site-packages/libpymcr/Matlab.py:71) args = unwrap(args, self._interface)
---> [72](file:///C:/Users/henrikjacobsen3/AppData/Local/miniforge3/envs/pace_env/lib/site-packages/libpymcr/Matlab.py:72) return wrap(self._interface.call(self._name, *args, nargout=nargout), self._interface)

RuntimeError: MatlabExecutionError: 
  File "C:\Users\henrikjacobsen3\AppData\Local\Temp\henrikjacobsen3\mcrCache9.14\pace_21\pace_2023a\buildtmp\CTF\Horace\herbert_core\utilities\general\get_shadowed_function_handle.m", line 39, function "get_shadowed_function_handle"
  File "C:\Users\henrikjacobsen3\AppData\Local\Temp\henrikjacobsen3\mcrCache9.14\pace_21\pace_2023a\buildtmp\CTF\Horace\herbert_core\applications\docify\help.m", line 22, function "help"
  File "C:\Users\henrikjacobsen3\AppData\Local\Temp\henrikjacobsen3\mcrCache9.14\pace_21\pace_2023a\src\call.m", line 94, function "eval_ans"
  File "C:\Users\henrikjacobsen3\AppData\Local\Temp\henrikjacobsen3\mcrCache9.14\pace_21\pace_2023a\src\call.m", line 36, function "call"

HERBERT:get_shadowed_function_handle:runtime_error: Cannot find "help" function!

[mducle]

Yeah, help and doc are not available in "compiled" Matlab code. The only work-around is to parse the m-files, extract the docstring and write a Python file with that docstring. There is a matlab2python tool which does that and generates a wrapper to the Matlab function / class which is what the current pyspinw uses but the Horace codebase is many times larger...