The KDE Help Center interface

The KDE Help Center
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# 2.3. The KDE Help Center interface

The KDE Help Center interface consists of two panes of information, embedded in a Konqueror window. This makes navigation simple, and intuitive, using Konqueror's own toolbars, just as you would a website. Additionally, most documents contain their own navigation tools, enabling you to move either sequentially through a document, using Next and Previous links, or to move around in a less structured manner, using hyperlinks. Links can take you to other parts of the same document, or to a different document, and you can use the Back (Left pointing arrow) or Forward (Right pointing arrow) icons on the toolbar to move through the documents you have viewed in this session.

The two panes display the contents of the help system, and the help files themselves, on the left and right respectively.

## 2.3.1. The Contents pane

The Contents pane in KDE Help Center is displayed on the left hand side of the window. As you might expect, you can move the splitter bar, to make sure you can comfortably read the contents of either pane.

The Contents pane is further divided into two tabs, one containing a menu showing all the help information KDE Help Center is aware of, and the other enabling you to Search for specific information.

### 2.3.1.1. The Contents Menu

The Contents contains the following default entries:

Introduction

  Welcome to KDE - an introduction to the K Desktop Environment.

Introduction to KDE

  The KDE Quickstart guide. Contains a tour of the KDE Interface and specific help and tips on how to work smarter with KDE.

KDE User's manual

  The KDE User's manual is an in depth exploration of KDE, including installation, configuration and customization, and use.

Application manuals

  Native KDE application documentation. All KDE applications have documentation in HTML. This section lists all the KDE applications with a brief description and a link to the full application documentation.

  The applications are displayed in a tree structure that echoes the default structure of the K menu, making it easy to find the application you are looking for.

System Manual Pages

  UNIX man pages are the traditional on-line documentation format for unix systems. Most programs on your system will have a man page. In addition, man pages exist for programming functions and file formats.

System Info Directory

  TeXinfo documentation is used by many GNU applications, including gcc (the C/C++ compiler), emacs, and many others.

The KDE FAQ

  Frequently asked questions about KDE, and their answers.

KDE on the web

  Links to KDE on the web, both the official KDE website, and other useful sites.

Contact Information

  Information on how to contact KDE developers, and how to join the KDE mailing lists.

Supporting KDE

  How to help, and how to get involved.

### 2.3.1.2. The Search tab

Searching requires you have the ht://Dig application installed. Information on installing and configuring the search index is available in the document. Configuration of the search index is performed in the KDE Control Center, by choosing Help->Index, and detailed help is available from this module.

For the purposes of this document, we'll assume you already have this set up and configured.

Searching the help files is fairly intuitive, enter the word(s) you wish to search for in the text box, choose your options (if any), and press Search. The results display in the viewer pane to the right.

The options available are:

Method

  Choose how to search for multiple words. If you choose and, results are returned only if all your search terms are included in the page. or returns results if any of the search terms are found, and boolean lets you search using a combination.

  Boolean syntax lets you use the operators `AND`, `OR` and `NOT` to create complex searches. Some examples:

  `cat and dog`

    Searches for pages which have both the words `cat` and `dog` in them. Pages with only one or the other will not be returned.

  `cat not dog`

    Searches for pages with `cat` in them, but only returns the ones that don't have the word `dog` in them.

  `cat or (dog not nose)`

    Searches for pages which contain `cat`, and for pages which contain `dog` but don't contain `nose`. Pages which contain both `cat` and `nose` would be returned, pages containing all three words would not.

  If your searches are not returning the results you expect, check carefully you haven't excluded the wrong search term with an errand `NOT` or a stray brace.

Max. results

  Determines the maximum number of results returned from your search.

Format

  Decide if you want just a short link to the page containing your search terms, or do you want a longer summary.

Sort

  Sort the results in order of Score (how closely your search terms were matched,) alphabetically by Title or by Date. Selecting the Reverse order check box, naturally enough, reverses the sort order of the results.

Update index

  Update the search index, to incorporate new documents, or if you think your database is incomplete or damaged. This may take some time.

## 2.3.2. The Man and Info sections

Man pages are the standard unix manual pages, and have been in use for many years on many operating systems. They are extremely thorough, and are the very best place to get information about most linux commands and applications. When people say "RTFM", the Manual they're referring to is very often the man page.

The man pages are not perfect however. They tend to be in depth, but also extremely technical, often written by developers, and for developers. In some cases this makes them somewhat unfriendly, if not downright impossible for many users to understand. They are however, the best source of solid information on most commandline applications, and very often the only source.

If you've ever wondered what the number is when people write things like man(1) it means which section of the manual the item is in. You'll see KDE Help Center uses the numbers to divide the very many man pages into their own sections, making it easier for you to find the information you're looking for, if you're just browsing.

Also available are the Info pages, intended to be a replacement for the man pages. The maintainer of some applications no longer update the man pages, so if there is both a man page and an info page available, the info page is probably the most recent. Most applications have one or the other though. If the application you are looking for help on is a GNU utility, you will most likely find it has an info page, not a man page.

### 2.3.2.1. Navigating inside the Info pages

Info documents are arranged hierarchically with each page called a node. All info documents have a Top node, i.e. the opening page. You can return to the Top of an info document by pressing Top.

Prev & Next are used to move to the previous/next page at the current level of the hierarchy.

Clicking on a menu item within a document moves you to a lower level in the hierarchy. You may move up the hierarchy by pressing Up.

Man is treated similarly to info, with the section index being the Top node and each man page on the level below. Man entries are one page long.

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