Search Docs view

The Search Docs view is intended to help a user quickly find documentation for a specific function/system call. Users can search for documentation in man pages, info and html.

Launching a search for Documentation

• From the View -- To do a search, the user would enter some text in the "Look for" field and press the "Find" button. Selecting any of the results with the mouse would open an external browser (see below) to display the corresponding documentation. By default, the first entry is always selected after a search.
  
  
• From the Editor -- A search for documentation could also be launched from the Lpex editor by pressing F1 when the cursor is over a function name. A search from the editor is always of type "substring" regardless of the settings the Search Docs view has.
  



• From the Parser views -- Select a function/class in the one of the Parser views(Projects Objects, System Objects),right-click on it and select the Find Help menu item from the Pop-up menu. The search type from a parser view is always "exact" regardless of the settings the Search Docs view has.
  

Search Docs Settings

Various search settings can be changed from the Search Docs settings dialog. which can be opened from the toolbar icon

LookUp Mode

A search for documentation could proceed in 3 modes:

1. Exact -- Only report matches that match exactly the 'key' entered (case insensitive)
2. Substring -- Report all matches that include the 'key' entered as a substring (case insensitive)
3. Regular Expression(Perl compatible)

Scope

A search for documentation could be limited in scope:

1. Man Pages -- only report matches in the man pages
2. Info Pages -- only report matches in the info pages
3. Html -- only report matches from the Html index (created by the user -- see below)

Notes:

• 'whatis' path -- When man pages are selected, a search only looks at the entries in the 'whatis' database to report matches. So it is important to have the 'whatis' path set correctly. A reasonable default has been provided("/var/cache/man/whatis") but this may change according to your distribution. You can only change it if "Man pages" is selected in the Scope.



• 'dir' path -- When info pages are selected, a search only looks at the entries in the top level 'dir' node. So it is important to have the 'dir' path set correctly. A reasonable default has been provided("/usr/share/info/dir") but this may change according to your distribution. You can only change it if "Info pages" is selected in the Scope

Browsing

To view the actual documentation, you will need either one of the following external browsers:

1. konqueror -- It is part of the KDE desktop
2. gnome-help-browser -- It is part of the GNOME desktop

Indexing Html Documentation

To index html documentation, the user needs to specify a list of directories that contain html files. Use the Browse button to navigate the filesystem and then add it to the list with the Add button. Then use the Create index button to index all html files in the list of directories.

Since the contents of files are indexed as words, you can only do a search in the html documentation in Exact mode(no substring, no regular expressions). You can only create an index if you have "Html" selected in the Scope.

Filtering search results

You can avoid having some search results displayed in the view with the Filter mechanism.

1. Click on the button in the view toolbar to bring up the Filter Patterns dialog box.
2. In the dialog box write a regular expression pattern that would match the "Name" column of those search result you do NOT want displayed.
3. Click on the Add button to add it to the list of patterns.
4. Once you are done adding patterns, click OK and notice how the search results are automatically updated to avoid displaying any result whose "Name" column matches any of the specified patterns.

e.g. Run a search with no filter

Limitations

• It is possible that the 'whatis' file used for searching man pages may be incomplete. It can be recreated with the 'makewhatis' comand. e.g to recreate the 'whatis' from the man pages in 2 directories(/usr/share/man and /usr/X11R6/man) a user would typically run:
  
  /user/sbin/makewhatis /usr/share/man /usr/X11R6/man
  
  

• The search for documentation does NOT support Remote Projects