Using help
The help browser is the in-app guide to Constructā¢. Everything it shows ships with the application ā it never opens an external browser or fetches content from the network.
The help of an app holds the pages of that app, the pages of the apps and features it contains, and the pages for every app. So the help of an app that contains a second app also holds the pages of the second app and of its features. A link to a page that the app does not hold shows as plain text.
The two panes
- Left pane ā a navigation tree of every help page, grouped by folder. Each markdown file's H2 and H3 headings appear as children of that file, so you can jump straight to a section.
- Right pane ā the rendered page. Internal links inside the page navigate to other help pages or to anchors inside the same page.
A breadcrumb above the page (e.g. Help āŗ How-to āŗ Pairing) shows
where you are; click any segment to jump back.
Navigating
- Back (ā¬ ) and Forward (ā”) buttons work like a browser: a new navigation truncates the forward stack.
- Home (š ) returns to the portal of the app: its name, and its pages grouped as tutorials, how-to guides, reference and explanation.
- A click on an image opens it at full size. The name under each image is its figure name. Press Esc to close it.
- In-page find (Ctrl+F) focuses the search box.
- Selecting a tree node opens that page; selecting a heading scrolls to that anchor.
Searching
Type a query in the search box at the top of the left pane. Results appear after a brief pause (ā 150 ms) as a popover under the input:
- Title hits rank above body hits.
- Each result shows the page title, its folder, and a one-line snippet of the matched context.
- ā / ā navigates the popover; Enter opens the highlighted result; Esc clears.
If a query returns fewer than three matches, a fuzzy fallback
runs: the search retries with single-edit variants and a prefix
wildcard. Typos like pairin will still find pairing.
Search syntax
The search supports a subset of SQLite FTS5 operators:
| Syntax | Meaning |
|---|---|
word1 word2 |
both terms required (AND) |
word1 OR word2 |
either term |
"exact phrase" |
match the literal phrase |
prefix* |
prefix match |
term1 NEAR term2 |
terms within 10 tokens |
"See all results"
The last entry in the popover opens a full results listing in the right pane. Each entry is a clickable link to the matching page.
Saving a page as PDF
The š¾ Save as PDF toolbar action prompts for a filename and exports the currently open page as A4 PDF. The PDF is written entirely from in-memory state ā no temporary files outside the target path.
Deep linking from other parts of the app
Other activities can open the help browser at a specific page or with
a pre-populated search query. The most common form is a small ?
button that opens the help page describing the surrounding feature
(see, for example, the passphrase prompt).
Persistent state
The help browser remembers:
- the page you were last viewing,
- a bounded history of recent pages,
- which folders you had expanded in the tree.
These are stored via the operating system's standard settings store; no separate file is created.