[platform-help-dev] Launching standalone help from Solaris command line

[gloria.s.goyena@xxxxxxxxxx]

We're using the Eclipse standalone help to package up our docs.  We have an
application for Windows that launches the help just fine.  In Solaris,
though, the application only worked when Netscape was already running. I
tried to launch standalone help from the command line but had the same
problem.  I found an old posting in the newsgroups with this issue (
http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/platform-swt-dev/msg00943.html).  They
suggested adding the Netscape executable to the path.  I tried the
following command but it didn't work, that is, unless Netscape is already
running:

<myjavapath>/bin/java -classpath
/usr/local/netscape/bin/netscape:./eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.help_2.1.1/help.jar
 org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help -command displayHelp -eclipsehome
./eclipse

I tried another solution by modifying the app to launch the browser
using
org.eclipse.help.internal.browser.BrowserManager.getInstance().createBrowser().displayURL("
http://eclipse.org";;);
(from http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.platform/msg05050.html
).  This also didn't work.

Another tip that *did* work was to create a shell script that launched
Netscape in the background before invoking standalone help from the command
line.  This isn't a great solution because I don't know what browser the
user has.

Most of the postings that I read with similar problems were from last year.
I'm hoping that it has been solved or that there's a good workaround to
have Eclipse standalone help launch the browser.  I think I'm missing
something very basic (great possibility, since I'm new to Eclipse).

Thanks very much for your help.  If this isn't the right forum, please let
me know.

--Gloria