4.1.2 Searching the online manuals

Choose Help > Search... to search the online documentation. The Search dialog, shown in Search dialog, appears.

Figure 4.1 Search dialog

This dialog lets you specify what you want to search for, and which manuals you want to search in.

Enter a string of text in the Search for area.

There are a number of additional options that you can set if you want:

• Select Whole Word if you want to confine your search to whole words only. Select Partial Search if you want to match part of a word as well. By default, partial searches are performed.

For example, if Whole Word is selected, searching for "pane" only matches the word "pane". If Partial Search is selected, searching for "pane" also matches "panels".

• You can choose whether to search the index or the table of contents of any given manual; select Index or Contents as appropriate. By default, indexes are searched, as these tend to produce the richest information.
• You can decide whether to download index or contents pages by checking the Download Files? option.

Select the manuals you want to search in the Manuals list. If nothing is selected, all manuals are searched. You can select any number of items in this list.

Select the packages you want to search from the Packages list. If nothing is selected (the default), all packages are searched. You can select any number of items in this list.

Note that selections made in the Manuals and Packages lists reflect each other. If you choose one or more manuals, the relevant packages are also selected, and if you choose one or more packages, the relevant manuals are selected.

Once you have specified the search options, click OK . The results of the search are displayed in your HTML browser.

The Help menu has a new submenu called Lisp Knowledgebase which takes the user to the Xanalys LispWorks support pages. From there, a Knowledgebase of frequent problems and their solutions can be searched. The support page also contains pointer to the latest patch bundle as well as guidelines on how to prepare a useful bug report.