General Programming Concepts: Writing and Debugging Programs

Chapter 21. Documentation Library Service

The Documentation Library Service provides an application that allows users to read and search HTML online documents. The Documentation Library Service was formerly known as the Documentation Search Service.

This chapter provides specific instructions for:

• Application developers who are including HTML documentation with their application and want to use the Documentation Library Service to provide reading, navigation, and search functions for their manuals.
• Anyone who wants to place a documents on a system and allow users to use the Documentation Library Service to read, navigate and search their documents.

The Documentation Library Service includes a search engine and the Documentation Library CGI programs. The Documentation Library CGI programs are stored in and run by a web server on a documentation server computer.

When the Documentation Library CGI program is called by an application, it displays the Documentation Library GUI in the user's browser. The user can then read, navigate through, or search the documents displayed in the interface.

When the user enters a text string in the search fields in the Documentation Library interface, the search string is then sent to the Library Service which conducts the search, generates a search results page, and then passes that page back to the user's browser.

The Documentation Library Service does not actually search through documents. Instead it searches compressed copies, called indexes, of documents. This greatly increases performance. In order to use the service, indexes must be created for documents. When the indexes are copied or installed on a system, the indexes must be registered with the library service so that the service knows their names and locations.

A default library GUI is provided. However, using customization features, you can customize the Library GUI to change things such as the title, text, graphics, and which documents are searched.

Note:

This chapter contains commands that are longer than the width of the page. To make sure that long commands are completely visible, they are split up and displayed on multiple lines. This is an example of a long command line that has been split for viewing:

/usr/IMNSearch/cli/itecrix -s server
     -x index_name
     -p /usr/docsearch/indexes/index_name/data     

When you see a command displayed like this, you must type it all on one command line, with a space between each part. The above command parts would be typed like the following:

/usr/IMNSearch/cli/itecrix -s server -x index_name -p /usr/docsearch/indexes/index_name/data

This chapter contains the following topics:

1. Language Support
2. Writing your HTML Documents
3. Calling the Documentation Library Service From Your Documentation
   1. Section A: Calling the Documentation Library Service From Your Documentation (for AIX 4.3, AIX 4.3.1 and AIX 4.3.2)
   2. Section B: Calling the Documentation Library Service From Your Documentation (for AIX 4.3.3 and later)
   3. Section C: Calling the Documentation Library Service From Your Documentation (for all versions)
4. Creating Indexes of your Documentation
5. Removing Indexes of your Documentation
6. Packaging your Application's Documentation