In this section:
- Documentation structure
-
Built-in documentation
This type of documentation is available for Professional edition only.
- Online documentation
Documentation structure
Both built-in and online PyCharm documentation have similar structure, which is outlined below:
- Getting Started
-
- The parts Guided Tour around the PyCharm User Interface and Tool Windows contain essential information about the user interface.
- The part PyCharm Editor. Guided Tour helps you master the PyCharm editor, and describes the basic and advanced editing procedures.
- Besides that, you can find information on PyCharm registration, most essential keyboard shortcuts, navigation facilities, and more.
- Basic concepts
- The Basic concepts part contains information about the notions that underlie the PyCharm functionality.
- Product Usage Guidelines
- The PyCharm Usage Guidelines part provides descriptions of the actions required to fulfil certain common tasks with PyCharm. Note that the part page contains an alphabetical index of all the available task descriptions.
- Language and Framework-Specific Guidelines
- The Language and Framework-Specific Guidelines part provides important prerequisites, enabling procedures, meta procedures of working with the various frameworks, and gives some details for performing specific tasks.
- Reference
- In the Reference part you can find descriptions of the tool windows, dialog controls, lists of the keyboard shortcuts, information related to specific version control systems etc.
Using built-in documentation
Built-in documentation enables you to browse through the topics using the table of contents, find occurrences in the Search tab, or use the detailed Index that contains all keywords from all topics.
- On the main menu, choose .
- Press F1.
- Click Help button, if it is available.
- Click the Search tab of the help viewer.
- In the search field, type the search string and press Enter.
- In the list of topics that contain occurrences of the search string, select the desired one. Occurrences are highlighted in the right pane of the help viewer.
- Click the Index tab of the help viewer.
- In the search field, type the desired keyword and press Enter. The caret rests at the first occurrence of the keyword. Every time you press Enter, the caret moves to the next occurrence of the keyword. To see the information about a keyword, select one of its sub-entries.
Online documentation
On the PyCharm site, find online version of the PyCharm's built-in documentation:
The online version makes it possible to find entries in the table of contents, browse documentation with the table of contents, rate topics, ask question and express your opinion. The layout of online documentation consists of:
- Table of contents pane
-
This pane shows the table of contents.
- Use this pane to browse through the topics.
- Click
button to show or hide this pane.
- If for some reason your browser fails to show actual table of contents, refresh the page.
- Topics pane
-
This pane shows the topic that is currently selected in the table of contents.
- In the Keymap drop-down list, choose the platform you want to view keyboard shortcuts in (Windows/Linux, OS X etc.)