Searching Affinity Designer/photo/publisher is broken? Not indexed?

[CartoonMike]

For the past 2 Mac OS X major updates (14 & 15) Affinity Help searches yield a lot of hits, but NOT one for the affinity app that I'm using. I posted on a pre-existing topic on Sunday, and tonight, Tues, have yet to get any reply. Yes, I know that Apple's help app got blamed because it didn't update or get refreshed according to some undisclosed rubric. Um.... if that's the case why on my Mac only Affinity products have this issue? Even old apps that I've updated and new ones that I recently installed have a full working search ability in their Help and it sure looks and behaves exactly like Apples Help ... and there was a line ("killall helpd; rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.help*; rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help*") on another thread that I copied and pasted into the Terminal app to force a help app database refresh, or something like that, and the response I got from terminal was: 

 

Michaels-iMac:~ cartoonmike$ killall helpd; rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.help*; rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help*
No matching processes belonging to you were found
Michaels-iMac:~ cartoonmike$ 

I'm an Administrative User, on Mac OS X 15 Catalina, and I did something to start using the BASH of preference (Z-something-something). I did that, so maybe the "killall..." line also needed to be updated. Or something. I dunno, I am comfy using Terminal, but not an expert -- Just like driving a car doesn't make me a mechanic...

Like I said in the other topic thread, all I want is to be able to search help instead of hunting and pecking for what I'm looking for as if this help is nothing more than a digital dead tree manual with no index. I feel this shouldn't be such a hard thing or such a big deal.

Thanks, I should also mention that it would be nice if the help for the app I'm currently using reads like it's the help for the app instead of for all affinity products. Meaning, if I'm trying to get info on Bleeds in Affinity Designer, then I shouldn't be reading  description that fits Affinity Publisher better. (i.e. options on the dialog box matches aPub better than aDesigner). 

Aside from the Help search snafu, I am so very happy with all 3 of my affinity apps! I'm only antsy because of the Stay In Home quarantine and my comprised immune system, I'm trying to do a self-printed & published mini-comic during these ... um... novel times we're living in. It's a bit of a challenge trying to find specific things about bleeds and margins that seem to be there in the help but damned if I can find them. However, I couldn't see me trying this without the Affinity apps.

Thanks again for reading this, stay healthy and wash your hands!

[firstdefence]

I gave up on the "in-house" help and exclusively use the online option: https://affinity.help/ I always have a browser open anyway.

[CartoonMike]

Thanks, looks like I'll have no other choice but the online option. Thanks Affinity Jedi, may the force be strong with you.

[Callum]

On 5/6/2020 at 2:58 PM, CartoonMike said:

Thanks, looks like I'll have no other choice but the online option. Thanks Affinity Jedi, may the force be strong with you.

The in app help is currently a little broken I'm afraid, using the online one firstdefence posted is recommended for the time being.

Thanks

C

[IanSG]

6 minutes ago, Callum said:

The in app help is currently a little broken

In the same sense that my niece is currently a little pregnant?

[Callum]

14 minutes ago, IanSG said:

In the same sense that my niece is currently a little pregnant?

I'm not sure, is your niece currently only a little pregnant on one operating system 😋?

[IanSG]

2 minutes ago, Callum said:

I'm not sure, is your niece currently only a little pregnant on one operating system 😋?

Strangely, that's not a question I've asked her!

[v_kyr]

Some general and dev related infos about Apple help ...

• Help Help: 3 What the docs don’t tell you

• How High Sierra has changed Help

• Apple Help Programming Guide

Quote

Application Info.plist

One of the most important files is the application Info.plist. Two keys need to be added or Spotlight will not index your help file. If you help file is not indexed, then even trying to open it will result in a perplexing "Not available" error page in the Apple Help Viewer. If you are using Xcode, then add these keys.

 Help Book directory name
 Help Book identifier

The Help Book directory name should refer to the Help Book bundle name (eg MyApp.help). This directory should be located in the application bundle Contents/Resources directory. The Help Book identifier is simply the name of your help (eg My App Help).

If you are editing the Info.plist file in a text editor, then add these keys and value strings:

 <key>CFBundleHelpBookFolder</key>
 <string>myapp.help</string>
 <key>CFBundleHelpBookName</key>
 <string>My App Help</string>

Help Book Info.plist

Below is a basic Help Book Info.plist for an application called "My App".

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
	<string>en</string>
	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string>org.sentry.myapp.help</string>
	<key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key>
	<string>6.0</string>
	<key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
	<string>BNDL</string>
	<key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
	<string>22</string>
	<key>CFBundleSignature</key>
	<string>hbwr</string>
	<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
	<string>22</string>
	<key>HPDBookAccessPath</key>
	<string>index.html</string>
	<key>HPDBookIconPath</key>
	<string>images/chip3_32x32.ico</string>
	<key>HPDBookIndexPath</key>
	<string>help.helpindex</string>
	<key>HPDBookTitle</key>
	<string>My App Help</string>
	<key>HPDBookType</key>
	<string>3</string>
	<key>HPDBookUsesExternalViewer</key>
	<false/>
</dict>
</plist>

Creating Help Book pages

Apple Help Book pages are simply HTML files. You need to create an index.html which is the table of contents for your application Help Book. You also need to ensure that this file is not indexed or it will show up in the Apple Help Viewer as a blank entry. You do this by adding the noindex meta tag to the file. Here is an example for "My App".

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
  <title>My App Table of Contents</title>
  <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> 
</head>
	
<body class="Normal">

  <H1><img style="margin: 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px 0.0px;" height="32.0" src="../images/chip3_32x32.ico" width="32.0" />Table of Contents</H1>

  <ul>
      <li id="Page1"><a href="Page1.html">Introduction</a></li>
      <li id="Page2"><a  href="Page2.html">Combo Boxes</a></li>
  </ul>
	  
</body>
</html>

A sample page 1 for "My App" is set out below. Note:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
    <head>
        <title>Introduction</title>
        <meta name="robots" content="index, anchors" />
        <meta name="description" content="My App Introduction" />
        <meta name="keywords" content="introduction, operating system" />
    </head>
    <body>
        <a name="Introduction"></a>
        <H1><img style="margin: 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px 0.0px;" height="32.0" src="../images/chip3_32x32.ico" width="32.0" />Introduction</H1>
	<p>My App is a very useful application for all users of all ages!</p>
        <p>The macOS version of My App has been tested on macOS Sierra 10.12.6 , macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 and macOS Mojave 10.14.5.</p>
        <p>The Windows version of My App has been tested on Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 10.</p>

        <p>The latest version of the My App application is available from the web site at <a href="https://www.sentry.org/">www.sentry.org</a>.</p>
    </body>
</html>

Once you have created the HTML pages for your Help Book, you need to index them. You do this from a Terminal using the macOS utility called hiutil. The man page ("man hiutil" from a Terminal) details all the information you may ever need to know. A simple example:

  hiutil -Caf helpindex.help .

This will index all the HTML files in the current directory and create the index file named helpindex.help in the same directory (do not omit the trailing full stop which signifies the current directory). It will also index any help anchors should you use them for contact-sensitive help; note that macOS applications rarely, if ever, implement context sensitive help.

An example of a help anchor is in the sample page 1 HTML file above; specifically the:

<a name="Introduction"></a>

Also note the

<meta name="robots" content="index, anchors" />

which ensures that the anchors are indexed along with the content.

Updating cached Help Books

macOS caches an Apple Help Book after first use which can be perplexing when you are developing a Help Book and do not see your changes. The way to overcome this is to run the following shell script from a Terminal after a change:

#!/bin/sh
killall helpd
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.help*
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help*

Note: those are tildes (~) and not dashes (-) before /Library; this only affects the current user's Apple Help cache and Apple Help preferences, not the system-wide ones.

 

[R C-R]

On 5/6/2020 at 2:53 AM, firstdefence said:

I gave up on the "in-house" help and exclusively use the online option: https://affinity.help/ I always have a browser open anyway.

At least for me, the built-in help for the Affinity apps works OK if not exactly great, but only if I give it time to finish updating whatever it is that causes the faint blue progress bar in the viewer window to appear & then disappear.