Installing the stand-alone help system
If you are creating an application that is not based on
the Eclipse framework, you can still use the Eclipse help system. Your
application can package and install the stand-alone help system, a very small
version of Eclipse that has had everything except the help system stripped out
of it. Then, your application can make API calls from its Help menu, or from UI
objects, to launch the help browser. The stand-alone help system has all the
features of the integrated help system, except infopops and active help.
Installation/packaging
These steps are for the help system
integrator and are not meant to address all the possible scenarios. It is
assumed that the launching application is in Java, and that
all your documentation is delivered as Eclipse plug-ins and, in general, you are
familiar with the eclipse help system.
- Download the Eclipse 2.0 Release level Platform Runtime Binary driver from
www.eclipse.org.
- Install (unzip) the driver under your application directory, for
example, d:\myApp. This will create an eclipse subdirectory, d:\myApp\eclipse that
contains the code required for the Eclipse platform (which includes the help
system).
How to call the help classes
- Make sure d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help_2.0.0\help.jar is
on your app classpath. The class you use to start, launch, and shut down the help system is
org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help.
- In your application, create an instance of the Help class by passing the plugins
directory. This object should be held onto until the end of your application.
Help helpSystem = new Help("d:\\myApp\\eclipse\\plugins");
- To start the help system:
helpSystem.start();
At the end of your application, to shutdown the help system:
helpSystem.shutdown();
- To invoke help when needed:
helpSystem.displayHelp();
You can also call help on specific primary TOC files or topics:
helpSystem.displayHelp("/com.mycompany.mytool.doc/toc.xml");
helpSystem.displayHelp("/com.mycompany.mytool.doc/tasks/task1.htm");
- To launch context sensitive help, call
helpSystem.displayContext(contextId, x, y) where contextId is a fully
qualified context id. The screen coordinates, x and y, are not currently used.
Testing stand-alone help
The org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help class has a simple main program that you
can launch and see how the stand-alone help works out of the box. From a command
line, run the following command:
java -classpath d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help_2.0.0\help.jar
org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins