<html>
<head><title>KDE Help System User Manual</title></head>
<body>
<h1>KDE Help System</h1>

The KDE help system is designed to make accessing the common UNIX help systems
(man and info) simple, as well as the native KDE documentation (HTML).
<p>

<h2>Invoking KDE Help</h2>

The help system may be started using a URL to display a file, e.g:
<p>
	kdehelp file:/usr/local/src/qt/html/index.html
<p>
URL's have been added for info and man, e.g.
<p>
	kdehelp info:"(gcc)G++ and GCC"
<p>
	kdehelp man:strcpy
<p>
If no command line parameter is supplied, an index is displayed (currently
just has links to info and man directories, but may have links to installed
<b>KDE</b> application's help in the future).

Alternatively, a file or URL may be opened using menus or dragged from
the <b>KDE</b> file manager - <b>kfm</b>.
<p>

<h2>Navigating in Help</h2>

Navigation in the help system is achieved by clicking on links within the
documents and by using the options in the <em>Goto</em> menu and the toolbar.
<p>
<h3>Contents</h3>

If the help system is started without a starting location supplied on the
command line, the Contents are displayed.  The first section consists of
general information on the KDE project. The second section section deals
with specific applications/command documentation.

The application and system documentation are divided into three sections:
<p>
<dl>
<dt><a href="file:/cgi-bin/helpindex">KDE Applications Help Index</a>
<dd>Native KDE application documentation.  All KDE applications have
documentation written in HTML.  This section lists all the KDE applications
with a brief description and a link to the full application documentation.
<dt><a href="man:(index)">System Manual Pages</a>
<dd>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.
<dt><a href="info:(dir)">System Info Directory</a>
<dd>TeXinfo documentation is used by many GNU applications, including gcc
(the C/C++ compiler), emacs, and many others.
</dl>
<p>
At any point you may return to the Contents by selecting <em>Contents</em>
from the <em>Goto</em> menu or from the toolbar.

<p>

<h3>Back and Forward</h3>

These are the history commands.  <em>Back</em> moves back to the previous
page you visited, while <em>Forward</em> moves you to the next page that
you visited.  The history list is currently up to 50 locations deep, though
this will probably be configurable in future releases.
<p>
<h3>Prev, Next, Up, Top</h3>

You will recognise these commands if you have used info previously.  Info
documents are arranged hierarchically with each page called a node.  All
info documents have a <em>Top</em> node, i.e. the opening page.  You can
return to the Top node of an info document by pressing Top.
<p>
<em>Prev & Next</em> are used to move to the previous/next page at the
current level of the hierarchy.
<p>
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 <em>Up</em>.
<p>
Man is treated similarly to info, with the section index being the Top node
and each man page on the level below.

<h2>Searching</h2>

You may search the man pages for a string by selecting <em>Search...</em>
from the <em>File</em> menu.  Once selected, the search page appears and
prompts you for a search string.  You may choose to search any of the
three help systems: KDE, man, or info.

Pressing Submit Search displays a list of matches in each category you
selected.
KDE matches are listed in order of best match.
Man page matches are listed as reported by the
<a href="man:apropos(1)">apropos</a> command.

<p>

Searching info documents has not yet been implemented.
<p>

</body>
</html>

