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.
  1. Make sure an application server is installed on the machine.  We have tested with Tomcat 3 and Tomcat 4.
  2. Download the Eclipse 2.0 Release level Platform Runtime Binary driver from www.eclipse.org.
  3. Install (unzip) the driver to a directory d:\eclipse.
  4. 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.

  5. Install the following fixes, depending on which server you are using:

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\. 

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