Help system

The help system lets you browse, search, bookmark, and print system documentation. The documentation is organized into sets of information that are analogous to books. The help system also supplies a text search capability for finding the information you need by search phrase or keyword, and context-sensitive help for finding information to describe the particular function you are working with.

You can interact with help system in the workbench using the Help view, or in the separate Help window.

The Help view

You can open a Help view by The Help view by selecting Help > Dynamic Help or by selecting Help > Search in the Workbench., A help view will open turning to the Related Topics or to the Search page. You can use links at the bottom of the help view to turn to other pages. Browse topics and click on links to display them.

Learn more on how to use the Help view.

The Help window

When you first open the Help window by selecting Help > Help Contents in the workbench, the first view shown in the help window is called Contents. Contents displays the table of contents for the product documentation. Click on one of the links to expand the navigation tree for a set of documentation. Browse the tree and click on topics to display them.

Context-sensitive help

If you are working through a task and encounter a part of the interface that you do not understand, you can summon context-sensitive help. Bring focus to the interface part in question by clicking on it or using the Tab key, and then press F1 (Shift+F1 on GTK+, and Help on the Mac).

A Help view (or tray if in a dialog) will display description of the part in focus, and list related topics. You can leave the Help view open to see information on other interface elements as you navigate to them.

If you request context help from inside a dialog, like a wizard or preferences, a help tray similar to the Help view will appear inside the dialog. Dialogs also provide an alternative means of requesting context help, via the help button in the button bar:

Help button

An alternative way of presenting context-sensitive information is using infopops. You can use Help preference page to choose to use infopops instead of the Help view for displaying context-sensitive help. If configured, a context help key, such as F1, will open an infopop that will provide you with information about the interface and, if appropriate, links to more information.

Related concepts
Help view

Related tasks
Using the help system