Help system

The online help system lets you browse, search, and print system documentation. The documentation is organized into sets of information that are analogous to books. The help system also supplies a text search engine for finding the information you need by keyword and context-sensitive help for finding information to describe the particular function you are working with.

 

The help browser

When you first open the help browser by selecting Help > Help Contents in the Workbench, the first view shown is called Contents. Contents displays various groupings of documentation for the product. Click on one of the links to expand the navigation tree for that set of documentation. Browse the tree and click on topics to display them.

 

Search

If you want to find a particular piece of information in the online help, use Search. The help system will search the entire information set, or only a part of it, to find topics that meet the criteria you specify.

 

Context-sensitive help

If you are working through a task and encounter part of the interface that you do not understand, use infopops. Bring focus to the interface widget in question by clicking on it or using the Tab key, and then press F1 (Ctrl+F1 on GTK+, and Help key on Carbon). The infopop will provide you with information about the interface and, if appropriate, links to more information.

Note: On the default install of KDE, Ctrl+F1 is the key binding for "Switch to Desktop 1". To make context-sensitive help work with GTK+ on KDE, then that binding must be removed. Try using the "KDE Default for 4 Modifier Keys" key binding scheme.

Accessing and navigating online help
Searching online help
Accessing context-sensitive help