<sect1 id="help-index">
<sect1info>

<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Mike</firstname>
<surname>McBride</surname>
</author>
<author>
<firstname>Jost</firstname>
<surname>Schenck</surname>
</author>
</authorgroup>

<date>21/10/2000</date>
<releaseinfo>1.00.00</releaseinfo>

<keywordset>
<keyword>KDE</keyword>
<keyword>KControl</keyword>
<keyword>Help Index</keyword>
<keyword>Index</keyword>
</keywordset>
</sect1info>
<title>Help Index</title>
<sect2 id="help-index-intro">
<title>Introduction</title>

<para>KDE 2.0 comes with a lot of documentation for applications and
components. While it is possible to just browse the manuals until you find that
piece of information you're looking for, this may be a very time-consuming
task. To make this easier for you, KDE offers fulltext search using a program
called <application>ht://dig</application>. It works quite similar to search
engines on the web, in fact some search engines you now might even use it. Just
click on the "<guilabel>Search</guilabel>" tab in the KDE Help Center, enter the
word you are looking for, click <guibutton>Search</guibutton> and enjoy!</para>

<para>However, to make use of this feature, <application>ht://dig</application>
has to be installed on your system and KDE has to be configured to make us of
it. This control module tries to help you doing the latter. If you haven't
installed <application>ht://dig</application> and it wasn't shipped with your
operating system you have to get ht://dig yourself. Have a look at <ulink
url="http://www.htdig.org">the ht://dig homepage</ulink> on how to download and
install it.</para>

</sect2> 

<sect2 id="help-index-use"> 

<title>Use</title> 

<para>There are two important things to tell KDE so it can make use of the
fulltext search engine:</para>

<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>where to find the <application>ht://dig</application> programs
KDE uses for fulltext search</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>where to search</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<sect3 id="help-index-use-progs">

<title>The <application>ht://dig</application> Programs</title>

<para> There are three programs KDE needs that come with
<application>ht://dig</application>: <command>htdig</command>,
<command>htsearch</command> and <command>htmerge</command>. For each program you
have to provide the full path including the program name, for example: <filename
class=directory>/usr/bin/htdig</filename>.</para> 

<para>Where exactly these programs are installed depends on your operating
system or your distribution. However, there are some good guesses you might want
to try:</para>

<itemizedlist>

<listitem><para><command>htdig</command> and <command>htmerge</command> are
often found in <filename class=directory>/usr/bin/</filename> or in something
like <filename
class=directory>/usr/local/www/htdig/bin/</filename>.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>the <command>htsearch</command> command is often found in a sub
directory called <filename class=directory>cgi-bin</filename>, for example
<filename class=directory>/usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin/</filename>.</para>

</listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<tip><para>To find out where for example <command>htdig</command> is installed
you can always type <command>whereis htdig</command> on the
console. <command>whereis</command> will look for the specified command in the
standard execution path directories. However, directories like <filename
class=directory>cgi-bin</filename> are often not in the standard execution
path.</para></tip>

</sect3>

<sect3 id="help-index-use-scope">
<title>Scope and Search Paths</title>

<para>In this section you can choose which help resources should be indexed,
<abbrev>i.e.</abbrev> made available to the search engine.</para>

<para>In the <guilabel>Scope</guilabel> frame you can select some typical
resources you want to be indexed, <abbrev>i.e.</abbrev> the KDE help files, and
the information offered by the <command>man</command> and
<command>info</command> commands. Note that some of those may still be disabled,
which means that support for them has not been added yet.</para>

<para>Maybe you have additional files you want to access using the KDE Help
Center's fulltext search feature. For example, you might have an
<abbrev>HTML</abbrev> reference installed in
<filename>/home/jdoe/docs/selfhtml</filename>.  By adding this path to the list
of additional search paths you make this documentation available to KDE Help
Center's fulltext search, too. Just click on the <guibutton>Add</guibutton>
button and a file dialog will ask you for an additional search directory. Select
<filename>/home/jdoe/docs/selfhtml</filename> and click
<guibutton>OK</guibutton>. To remove an additional search path, just select it
and click <guibutton>Delete</guibutton>.</para>

<important><para>Your changes to the scope and additional search paths will not
take effect if you don't click on the <guibutton>Generate index ...</guibutton>
button.</para></important>


</sect3>
<sect3 id="help-index-language">
<title>Selecting the language</title>
<para>You can select the language you want the help files in using the combo box labeled <guilabel>Language Settings</guilabel></para>
</sect3>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="help-index-author">
<title>Section Author</title>
<para>This section written by: Jost Schenck <email>jost@schenck.de</email></para>
<para>Minor update by: Mike McBride <email>mpmcbride7@yahoo.com</email></para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
