Introduction to Apple Help Programming Guide

Explains how to author, package, and display user help content in OS X.

Who Should Read This Document?

If you are creating an application, plug-in, or other software product for OS X with a user interface, you should read this document to learn how to create an Apple Help help book and display it in Help Viewer.

Organization of This Document

This document includes the following chapters and appendixes:

Apple Help Concepts describes the Help Viewer application and Spotlight For Help, and introduces the Apple Help API.

Authoring Apple Help shows how you can create a basic help book and describes how to index your help book.

Help Book Registration describes how to register your help book with Help Viewer.

Opening Your Help Book in Help Viewer shows how to use the Apple Help functions to access and display help book content from your application.

Apple Help Meta Tag Properties lists the meta tags specific to Apple Help. You can use these tags to control how your help content is displayed.

Apple Help URLs lists Apple Help URLs that you can use to link to help pages and other resources.

Availability

Help Viewer and the Apple Help API are available in OS X v10.0 and later.