How to switch to local help

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RDi provides you with options to use both local and remote help.

A number of people were asking if it is possible to switch to local help to avoid firewall or network lag.

Here is some information documenting how:

NOTE: The following shows the exact steps, but for the latest information, see the above link.

By default when you install RDi your help is found remotely.  The advantage is that IBM can update this at any time and you will have the latest help.

However depending on your network access you may find the speed too slow or that there are firewall issues.  You have the option to use local help on your workstation as well.  This means that a small HTTP server is set up on your workstation that will serve the help content. 

You can choose this during the install on this page.

If you have already installed with remote help it is possible to switch to local help.  This is controlled from the Help->Content page in the Window->Preferences dialog.

If you have remote help installed it will initially look like this:

Select the IBM Rational Developer for i entry and hit the Disable button to disable the remote help.

Then select the Local entry and hit the Enable button.

Do NOT press the Test Connection button yet as the server has not yet been configured.

Press the OK button to configure the Local server and download the relevant RDi help content.

An Initializing Help progress dialog will appear that you can monitor the progress of starting the local help server and downloading the content

Now you can access help from Help->Contents or just pressing F1 in your editor and it will respond more quickly.