Common Desktop Environment: Help System Author's and Programmer's Guide

Testing Your Help

Testing your help volume is as important as testing any software product. Here are some tips to help you plan your testing.

Validating Hyperlinks

Display your help volume and try every hyperlink. Any underlined text (solid or dashed underlines) is a hyperlink. Also, test any graphics that are hyperlinks. Graphic hyperlinks use an open-cornered border (dashed or solid) around the image as a hyperlink cue.
If you are writing application-specific help and you have included any JumpNewView, Man, or AppDefined links, you must test these links from your application. Testing such links using dthelpview does not ensure that the links will operate correctly from within your application.

Verifying Entry Points

If you are writing application-specific help that uses IDs to access particular help topics, there are two ways to verify that the IDs have been properly established within the help volume:

Run your application and request help just as a user will, trying each of the entry points. This also verifies that the application is using the correct IDs.
If your application is not ready to use (still under development), you can test each ID by running dthelpview for each ID:
```
dthelpview -helpVolume volume.sdl -locationId id 
```
Where id is the location ID that you want to test. If dthelpview displays the correct topic, then the ID is okay.

Checking Index Entries

Users search or browse a help volume index to find help topics. Examine your index entries carefully to eliminate any vague terms or duplicate entries. Also select each index entry to verify that the topic displayed is the most appropriate information.

Testing Graphics

Physically run your application on various displays to verify that the graphics are acceptable on color, grayscale, and monochrome displays.
You can also simulate other displays by changing the number of colors used by the desktop. To do so, open Style Manager, choose Number Of Colors, and select a different color option.

Checking for Parser Errors

When developing a help volume, it is often convenient to set the onerror=go option in the helptag.opt file. If you have done this, you should remove the option and process your source files a final time to ensure that no errors are encountered.