Help

Extensive help is available for Chimera; the User's Guide and Programmer's Guide are written in HTML and can be displayed using the web browser of choice. This HTML documentation is bundled with a Chimera download and can be accessed from the Chimera Help menu. Use of the bundled documentation is recommended because it is synchronized with the locally installed version of Chimera. (The development version of the User's Guide is available online for viewing, but may describe features that have not yet been released.)

• Search Documentation... search the local (bundled) Chimera documentation
• User's Guide - open the Chimera User's Guide
• Commands Index - open the Chimera Commands Index
• Tutorials - open the Tutorials section of the Chimera User's Guide
• Context Help - describe the feature that is clicked next (avoid clicking the top bar of a dialog, since that will fail to bring up a help page)
• Check for Updates (requires internet connectivity) - see if any production releases are newer than the version in use, and if so, provide links to download them
• Contact Us - show e-mail addresses for asking questions or making suggestions
• Report a Bug... open a form for bug submission
• Citation Info - show how to cite usage of Chimera
• Registration... open a form for registration as a Chimera user
• About UCSF Chimera - report what version of Chimera is being used and show copyright information

To call up the manual page for a specific command, type into the Command Line:

help command

help commands

Many of the tools and interfaces have Help buttons that open their respective manual pages. Some tools and interfaces also supply balloon help, explanatory text that pops up when the cursor is paused over some relevant part of a dialog. Whether to show balloon help can be set in the Messages preferences.

When the graphics window has mouse focus, pausing the cursor over an atom or bond (without clicking any buttons) shows an atomspec balloon with information such as atom name, residue number, and bond length. The style of atomspec balloons and whether they should be shown can be set in the Labels preferences.