Installing the help system as an infocenter
You can allow your users to access the help system over the Internet or an
intranet, by installing the stand-alone help system and the documentation
plug-ins on a web server. The application accesses the documentation by calling
a URL, and the help system is shown in their web browser. The infocenter help
system can be used both for client applications and for web applications, either
of which can have their help accessed remotely. All features except infopops and
active help are supported.
Installation/packaging
These steps are for the help system
integrator and web admin and are not meant to address all the possible scenarios. It is
assumed that all your documentation is delivered as Eclipse plug-ins and, in general, you are
familiar with the eclipse help system. For the end users, it is assumed that they have
IE5.x or 6.x or Mozilla installed on their machines.
- Make sure an application server is installed on the machine. We have
tested with Tomcat 3 and Tomcat 4.
- Download the Eclipse 2.0 Release level Platform Runtime Binary driver from
www.eclipse.org.
- Install (unzip) the driver to a directory d:\eclipse.
- Register the Eclipse Help application residing in
d:\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.webapp_2.0.0 with the web server. Do not copy
this directory elsewhere; it must remain in Eclipse installation tree.
In
Tomcat this registration can be accomplished by adding the following lines to
the tomcat\conf\server.xml file:
<Context path="/help" docBase="d:\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.webapp_2.0.0">
</Context>
In Tomcat 3 add the lines near end of the file, as the last element inside
the ContextManager section. In Tomcat 4, add this section as the last element
inside the Host section.
- Install the following fixes, depending on which server you are using:
- Tomcat 3: Tomcat 3 does not have XML parser library available to
a web application. To fix that, copy xercesImpl.jar and xmlParserAPIs.jar from
d:\eclipse\plugins\org.apache.xerces_4.0.3\ to
d:\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.webapp_2.0.0\WEB-INF\lib\
- Tomcat 4:
- Both Eclipse and Tomcat contain code to set a
URLStreamHandler, but it can only be set once. To allow both Tomcat and
Eclipse to work correctly, a library
d:\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.webapp_2.0.0\infocenter\eclipseurl.jar needs
to be added to the class path at Tomcat startup. In Tomcat 4.0.3 edit
tomcat/bin/setclasspath.bat file and after the line:
set CLASSPATH=%JAVA_HOME%\lib\tools.jar
insert the line:
set CLASSPATH=%CLASSPATH%;d:\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.webapp_2.0.0\infocenter\eclipseurl.jar.
-
Because of changes to the xml library, remove tomcat\common\lib\xerces.jar, then edit setclasspath.bat by replacing the line
set JAVA_OPTS=
with
set JAVA_OPTS=-Xbootclasspath/a:d:\eclipse\plugins\org.apache.xerces_4.0.3\xercesImpl.jar;d:\eclipse\plugins\org.apaches.xerces_4.0.3\xmlParserAPIs.jar.
- Disable precompiled JSP's:. Unless you are using Tomcat 4.0.x or
plan to ship the jasper jar files, you should also copy
d:\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.webapp_2.0.0\infocenter\web.xml to
d:\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.webapp_2.0.0\WEB-INF.
Using the infocenter
Start the web server. Point a web browser to the path of the web
application. On the machine the Tomcat is installed, this would be
http://localhost:8080/help/.
Installing custom documentation
The Eclipse platform comes with its own documentation, contained in the
org.eclipse.platform.doc.user plug-in. It will be available in the
infocenter by default. To have you own documentation show up, package the
documentation as Eclipse documentation plug-ins. Install them to
d:\eclipse\plugins\.