Professional Xcode® 3

Chapter 12. Help and Documentation

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Browsing the Xcode, API, and developer documentation

• Searching for symbols, topics, and keywords

• Navigating help documentation

• Learning handy help shortcuts

• Using quick help to get fast answers

• Installing new documentation sets and keep them up to date

Modern operating systems are staggering in their size and complexity. The sheer quantity of application program interfaces (APIs) available to a developer can be overwhelming at times. There are scores of frameworks and libraries, each consisting of literally thousands of classes, methods, functions, and constants. Often, just finding the correct method or constant can be your most difficult programming task.

To help you navigate this jungle of symbols, Xcode provides integrated help and documentation. You can browse and search developer documentation. All of the major APIs are indexed, allowing you to call up the documentation for any symbol almost instantly.

This chapter gives you an overview of what help resources are available, shows you how to navigate the documentation, and explores a number of different search techniques.

A lot of the documentation features are nice to know but aren't critical for day-to-day development. If you want just the essentials from this chapter, read the following sections:

• Navigating Documentation

• Searching Documentation

• Documentation Shortcuts

The documentation provided with Xcode, along with additional material available through subscription, include: ...