Introduction to the Help System

The Help System provides a complete set of tools to develop online help for application software. It enables authors to write online help that includes graphics and text formatting, hyperlinks, and communication with the application.

The Help System also provides a programmer's toolkit for integrating online help into an application. The Help System application program interface supplies two specialized help dialogs and supporting routines that are used to display, navigate, search, and print online help modules.

Developer's Toolkit

The Help System Developer's Toolkit contains tools to write, process, and view online help and contains an application programming library.

For Authors

• DocBook markup language —a set of tags used in text files to mark organization and content of your online help.

• DocBook software—a set of software tools for converting the DocBook files you write into run-time help files.

• Helpview application—a viewer program for displaying your online help so you can read and interact with it just as your audience will.

Refer to Chapter 2 “Organizing and Writing a Help Volume” to learn more about creating and processing online help.

For Application Developers

• DtHelp programming library—an application program interface (API) for integrating help windows into your application.

• A sample program—a simple example that shows how to integrate the Help System into a Motif application.

Chapters 9 through 13 discuss the application programming library.