12.1 Using the KDE Help Center
From the KDE desktop, you can access the KDE help center in various ways: If you
need information from within an application, simply click the
application's button or press F1
to open the application's documentation in the help center. If you start
the help center from the main menu, or from the command line with
khelpcenter, you are taken to the main window of the
help center from which you can browse the help topics.
The menu and the toolbar provide options for printing contents from the
help center, searching the currently displayed page, and navigating and
customizing the help center. The display field in the right part of the
window always shows the currently selected contents, such as online
manuals, search results, or Web pages.
The navigation area in the left part of the window contains several tabs:
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Presents a tree view of all available information sources. The help
center addresses various target groups, such as users, administrators,
and developers. Click the book icons to open and browse the individual
categories. Under the heading , for
example, you can also browse man (manual) and info (information) pages
associated with command line programs. The help center also provides
access to some online databases that cover special hardware and
software issues for your product. All these sources can be searched
conveniently once a search index has been generated.
The contents of your help center depends on which software packages
are currently installed and which languages are selected as your
system languages.
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Provides a quick reference where you can look up the definitions of
words that might be unfamiliar to you.
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Holds options for the full text search of the help center. You can
combine several search criteria.
Searching the Help Center
To use the full text search KDE help center offers, generate a search index and
set the search parameters. If the search index has not yet been
generated, the system automatically prompts you to do so when you click
the tab.
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To search for a term, click into the text field and enter the search
string.
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To combine your search strings with operands, click
and select the operand to use.
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Choose an option from to limit the
number of hits to display.
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To restrict your search to certain types of documentation, choose an
option from . With
, a predefined selection of documents is
searched. includes all types of documents in the
search. lets you define which documents to
include in your search. Just activate the documents you want in the
list.
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When you have set the options according to your wishes, click
. The search results are then displayed as a
list of links in the display field and can be navigated with mouse
clicks.
Generating a New Search Index
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To create a new search index, select from the menu. A window opens, showing a list of
documentation currently available in the help center.
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Select the documents to integrate in the search index and click
. After the index has been generated, you
can use the full text search.
