55.7. Online Help

Webmin versions 0.63 and greater have support for context-sensitive help. The hlink function generates HTML for a link to a CGI program that processes and displays a given help page. Help pages are stored in the help subdirectory under the module directory, and are named simply page.html for those in English. So, a call to hlink like would output a link to display the help page help/name.html.

print &hlink("Enter username:", "name"),
      "<input name=username size=20><p>
";

If the help parameter to the header function is set, a link labeled Help that is directed to the specified help page is included in the heading. This can be useful if you have created specific documentation that explains what the entire page does in general, instead of (or as well as) documenting fields individually. The same rules about HTML help file selection apply.

Even though online help is not mandatory (or even common) in Webmin modules, it can be useful to provide additional information to users about what a field really means or what the purpose of a page is. In many cases, inputs are not self-explanatory and need additional documentation, so why not make it available from the page itself?

As Section 56.3 “Internationalization” explains, Webmin modules can support multiple languages through the use of alternative translation files in the lang subdirectory. Help pages can exist in more than one language as well by creating files named like page.language.html in the help subdirectory. If such a file exists, it will be used in preference to page.html, which is assumed to be in English. To add a German version of an existing name.html page, for example, you would need to create name.de.html.