Contents
Abstract
openSUSE® comes with various sources of information and documentation, many of which are already integrated in your installed system:
- Desktop Help Centers
The help centers of both the KDE desktop (KDE help center) and the GNOME desktop (Yelp) provide central access to the most important documentation resources on your system, in searchable form. These resources include online help for installed applications, man pages, info pages, and the Novell/SUSE manuals delivered with your product. Learn more about your desktop's help center in Section 8.1, “Using the KDE Help Center” and Section 8.2, “Using GNOME Yelp”.
- Separate Help Packages for Some Applications
When installing new software with YaST, the software documentation is installed automatically in most cases, and usually appears in the help center of your desktop. However, some applications, such as GIMP, may have different online help packages that can be installed separately with YaST and do not integrate into the help centers.
- Documentation in
/usr/share/doc This traditional help directory holds various documentation files and the release notes for your system. Find more detailed information in Section “Documentation Directory” (Chapter 35, Help and Documentation, ↑Reference).
- Man Pages and Info Pages for Shell Commands
When working with the shell, you do not need to know the options of the commands by heart. Traditionally, the shell provides integrated help by means of man pages and info pages. Read more in Section “Man Pages” (Chapter 35, Help and Documentation, ↑Reference) and Section “Info Pages” (Chapter 35, Help and Documentation, ↑Reference).
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:
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.
Provides a quick reference where you can look up the definitions of words that might be unfamiliar to you.
Holds options for the full text search of the help center. You can combine several search criteria.
Procedure 8.1. 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.
To search for a term, click into the text field and enter the search string.
To combine your search strings with operands, click and select the operand to use.
Choose an option from to limit the number of hits to display.
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.
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.
Procedure 8.2. Generating a New Search Index
To create a new search index, select + from the menu. A window opens, showing a list of the documentation currently available in the help center.
Select the documents to integrate in the search index and click . After the index has been generated, you can use the full text search.