1 Microchip Offline Help Content

What is Micochip Offline Help Content?

Introduction

The Microchip Offline Help Content application allows you to access local help content. You can browse the local content and you can do keyword lookups in the local content. The application has two parts:

Viewer
A window that lists the local content and let’s you browse it.
Lookup
A web server is running in the background, listening for keyword lookup requests from MPLAB® X and other applications. If the keyword content is found, the application will show this in the viewer.

Download the Application

You can download and run the Microchip Offline Help Content application as a standalone application. You can also download and run the Microchip Offline Help Content application as a MPLAB X plugin. When it is running you can see an icon in the system tray of your computer:

. Click on the icon to bring up the application window, it is not already showing.

Download Content

To see anything in the Microchip Offline Help Content application you need local content. You can find and download the content from the Content Manager.

Application Menus

The menus in the application are

  • File > Delete Publication: This deletes the publication from your local system and it disappears from the view.
  • File > Folders for Help Content: Here you can set up one or more folders where the application will look for the help content.
  • File > Refresh: This refreshes the list of publications. This is useful when you have added or removed content files.
  • File > Show on Application Startup: If this is menu choice has a checkmark, the viewer will start when the application starts. If the viewer is hidden you can click on the system tray icon to show the viewer.
  • File > Quit: Stops the application.
  • Help > About: Shows the version and information about which ports the application receives requests on.

Application Configuration

The application can be configured by updating the configuration file and restarting the application. The configuration file can be found here: "%AppData%\Roaming\Microchip Offline Help Content\app_settings.json"

Configuration options:

  • UploadDirs: this is the list of folders where the applicaton will look for content. Some client applications, like MCC will add folders to this list. This list can also be seen by clicking on the menu File > Folders for Help Content
  • Ports: these are the ports for the application, the lookup and the viewer. The values can be seen in the menu: Help > About.
  • ShowAppWindow: If this is true the content browse window will show on startup. This value can be changed by using the menu: File > Show on Application Startup

Use Cases

The default use case is to install the application on a local PC. It is possible to install the application on an internal server. You can then set up an internal DNS or Proxy to point URL requests to the server installation.