Help System Modes and Behaviors

The IDL help system behaves differently in different situations, and depending on choices you make when configuring the IDL Workbench and your system environment.

When Running the IDL Workbench

When you are using the IDL Workbench, help system content can be displayed either in the Help Browser Interface or in the Help View Interface.

See Selecting a Help System Interface to choose which interface you want to use.

Note
On Solaris and some Linux systems, only the Help Browser interface is available.

When Running the IDL Command Line

When you are using IDL as a terminal application (that is, without running the IDL Workbench), help is always displayed in the Help Browser Interface. The browser used will depend on your operating system version and environment as described in Help System Platform Dependencies.

When Running the IDL Help System by Itself

If you launch the IDL help system outside of IDL — from the Windows start menu, from a Macintosh icon, or using the idlhelp command on Linux and Solaris systems — the help system displays in the Help Browser interface. The browser used will depend on your operating system version and environment as described in Help System Platform Dependencies.

See Help Server for additional details on what happens when using the stand-alone help system.

When Running IDL Runtime Applications

The Eclipse-based IDL help system is not supported for IDL runtime applications. You can still use the IDL ONLINE_HELP routine to provide help for a runtime application, as described in Providing Online Help For Your Application.