[platform-help-dev] requests for standalone help

["Erik Hennum" <ehennum@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Ecliptites:

How should an HTML or applet client send a help request to a standalone
Eclipse help viewer?

A.  Always send the browser the Eclipse URL, specifying the content page as
a URL parameter.

    The concern about this approach is that it creates a new instance each
time, so you lose the
    state of the help viewer (such as the open TOC and the content browse
history within the
    framework).

B.  For the first request, open a new browser window and send the browser
the Eclipse URL,
    specifying the content page as a URL parameter.  For the second
request, send the
    URL for the content page to the MainFrame content window.

   The concerns about this approach might be how the application would know
if the user has
    closed the browser window (especially for a Java applet client) or has
shown some other
    page in the browser window so the framework is no longer open.

C.  Send the browser the URL for the content page, specifying the MainFrame
content window
    as the target.  In each content page, add JavaScript to check for the
framework and, if the
    framework isn't open, reroute to the Eclipse URL, passing the content
page as a URL parameter.

I'm thinking approach C would be the right one, but I want to check whether
I'm misunderstanding
something.

By the way, are there any convenience JavaScript files or Java classes to
make it easier
for non-JFace clients to make context-sensitive help requests for
standalone Eclipse?


Thanks in advance for any suggestions,


Erik Hennum