Yelp is an open source application that provides users with a straightforward way to find the best documentation for the GNOME desktop environment, as well as for all of its components and applications.
Designed for GNOME
It is distributed as part of the GNOME project, installed by default with any fresh installation of the controversial desktop environment. A source archive is also available for download, allowing users to configure, compile and install the application on any Linux distribution.
The application is accessible from any GNOME application, simply by pressing the F1 button or by accessing the Help option, allowing users to easily find detailed information about how to use the default functions of the respective software.
Features at a glance
It provides users with basic introduction and overview of each GNOME application, as well as with getting started howtos, customization examples, and advanced configuration options. All the documentation is well structured and can be easily navigated.
The program supports audio, video, TTML subtitles, MathML, SVG, conditional processing, and syntax highlighting. It can natively display DocBook, Mallard, HTML, man pages, and info documents.
In addition, the documentation can be easily located according to the help system specification provided by freedesktop.org. It is comprised of two command-line utilities, yelp-tools and yelp-xls.
While yelp-tools includes various commands for generating, publishing and maintaining documentation, the yelp-xls utility provides the core XSLT stylesheets used by the Yelp application to display the documentation.
Another interesting feature is the ability to display detailed documentation for the GNOME desktop environment, helping novices to learn how to use various functions, and allowing advanced users to troubleshoot problems faster than with other traditional tools.
Bottom line
All in all, Yelp is an extremely useful application for novice and advanced GNOME users alike, a central place for all the documentation and troubleshooting information of the entire GNOME desktop environment.
