Help System
This chapter describes the Help system in the GNOME Desktop.
Introduction to the Help System
online Help
Help
Help
introduction
The GNOME Desktop displays help in the Yelp Help
browser. For more information, see Yelp Help Browser in the
GNOME Desktop User Guide.
The source documents for the help are XML files. The XML files are
written to the DocBook XML Version 4.1.2 document type definition (DTD). The
DocBook XML files are converted to HTML using stylesheets installed with
gnome-doc-utils and the HTML is displayed in the
help browser. For more information on DocBook XML, see the following URL:
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml
The Help system uses Open Source Metadata Framework
(OMF) files, and a cataloging system. The next sections describe OMF files
and the cataloging system.
OMF Files
.omf files
OMF files
Help
OMF files
OMF files
The XML file for each manual
has an associated OMF file. The OMF file contains information about the manual
that is used by the Help browser. OMF files have a .omf
extension.
When you install an application, the installation process installs an
OMF file to a directory of OMF files. If a Help document has an associated
OMF file in an OMF file directory, the Help document is displayed in the Help
browser.
OMF files contain information about Help documents such as the following:
The location of the XML file for the Help document
The title of the Help document
A subject category to which the Help document belongs
For more information on how to create OMF files, please see
Writing Scrollkeeper
OMF Files.
ScrollKeeper Cataloging System
Help
ScrollKeeper cataloging system
ScrollKeeper cataloging system
ScrollKeeper is a cataloging
system for documentation. Its primary function is to manage the information in
OMF files for the help browser. When you install an application, the
OMF file is copied to the
$prefix/share/omf/<application-name>
directory.
ScrollKeeper builds a table of contents from the
collection of OMF files in the directories specified in
$prefix/etc/scrollkeeper.conf file.
This file usually consists of a single line with the OMF_DIR
set to a comma separated list of directories to recursively search.
OMF_DIR=/usr/share/omf:/usr/local/share/omf:/opt/gnome2/share/omf:/opt/kde/omf
ScrollKeeper contains a hierarchy of subject
categories to which a help document can belong. The subject category of the document
in the OMF file determines the location of the document in the table of contents presented
by the help browser.
The hierarchy of subject categories is defined in the file
$prefix/scrollkeeper/Templates/<lang>/scrollkeeper_cl.xml.
The subject category of a document must correspond to a category specified in this file.
For more information on the Scrollkeeper system,
visit the website at
http://scrollkeeper.sourceforge.net/.
If the help document XML file is moved to a new location, then
the location in the OMF file needs to be updated.