Help Browser :: Desktop Tools and Development Environment (Getting Started)

Getting Started

Help Browser

Use the Help browser to search for and view documentation and demos for all your MathWorks products. The Help browser is an HTML viewer integrated into the MATLAB desktop.

To open the Help browser, click the help button in the desktop toolbar.

The Help browser consists of two panes, the Help Navigator, which you use to find information, and the display pane, where you view the information. These are the key features:

Contents tab -- View the titles and tables of contents of the documentation.
Index tab -- Find specific index entries (selected keywords) in the documentation.
Search tab -- Look for specific words in the documentation.
Demos tab -- View and run demonstrations for your MathWorks products.

While viewing the documentation, you can

Browse to other pages -- Use the arrows at the tops and bottoms of the pages to move through the document, or use the back and forward buttons in the toolbar to go to previously viewed pages.
Bookmark pages -- Use the Favorites menu.
Print a page -- Click the print button in the toolbar.
Find a term in the page -- Click the find icon () in the toolbar.
Copy or evaluate a selection -- Select text, such as code from an example, then right-click and use a context menu item to copy the selection or evaluate (run) it.

Other Forms of Help

In addition to the Help browser, you can use help functions. To get help for a specific function, use the doc function. For example, doc format displays documentation for the format function in the Help browser.

To see a briefer form of the documentation for a function, type help followed by the function name. The resulting help text appears in the Command Window. It shows function names in all capital letters to distinguish them from the surrounding text. When you use the function names, type them in lowercase or they will not run. Some functions actually consist of both uppercase and lowercase letters, and the help text clearly indicates that. For those functions, match the case used in the help function.

Other means for getting help include contacting Technical Support (http://www.mathworks.com/support) and participating in the newsgroup for MATLAB users, comp.soft-sys.matlab.

For More Information See Help for Using MATLAB in the MATLAB Desktop Tools and Development Environment documentation, and the reference pages for the doc and help functions.

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