Re: [platform-help-dev] embedded help for web applications for InfoCente

[birsan@xxxxxxxxxx]

Hi Erik,

> When would the plugin's registration code get executed (and thus make the
> extension web application available)?

We need to have an extension point analogous to org.eclipse.ui.startup .
Plugins that extend this extension point should be started during the
platform startup.
If we call eclipse.exe to start our own infocenter application, I think
this can be easily
done by using similar code.

> Also, would the extension web application have access to the resources
for
> a specified documentation plugin?

Each webapp runs within a webapp class loader extended with the class
loader of the plugin
that defines the webapp.
So, theoretically you have access to everything in eclipse, using the
standard platform mechanisms.

We have also created and registered a URL protocol handler for help, but I
am not sure if this is
really needed. If you look at ContentUtil you can see how we use URL's to
get to tocs, content, etc.
Some of this was done to solve the infocenter issues caused by not running
the help webapp as
a plugin.


> Do you have any plans for supporting skins for the UI of the Eclipse help
> web application?

One the main reasons we want to open up help a bit more is to support UI
customization,
so the answer is yes, but we have not defined the mechanism yet.

> Finally, would extensibility include the TOC XML format (so that an
> extension with sufficient foolhardiness could add topic identifier
> attributes)?

We haven't really looked at this feature, but have been contemplating
extending the current
IHelp, IToc and ITopic interfaces to allow for customized tocs to be added
to the help.
This assumed full processing of customized topic files by the caller.
Again, these were
just high level discussion we had, with having gone into any details.

-Dorian