[platform-help-dev] standalone help from multiple hosts

["Erik Hennum" <ehennum@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Ecliptians:

How would we use standalone Eclipse help to provide help for two
applications that
download from different hosts and are open at the same time during a
browser session?

A.  Install a separate copy of Eclipse help on each host.

    The concern about this approach would be whether two instances of
Eclipse
    could run at the same time without collision.  If both use the same
window names
    for their frames, couldn't URLs be directed to the wrong framework?

B.  Install a single copy of Eclipse and both documentation plugins on a
single host.

    The concern about this approach is about the maintenance burden caused
by separating
    the help from the application.  As applications are added and removed
from remote hosts,
    that would require adding and removing documentation plugins from the
central host.  Also,
    applications would have to know the URL for the central host.

Other ideas?  I noticed that the Eclipse can support content pages on a
remote host
(except for fulltext search, but it seems clear that Lucene could support
remote indexing
since it does no IO directly).

By the way, what platforms does standalone Eclipse support?  Any client
with Internet Explorer 4+
or Netscape 4+?  Any web server that supports Servlet2.2 and JSP1.1?


Thanks in advance,


Erik Hennum