[news.eclipse.platform.ua] Re: Context Sensitive Help problems

[Chris Goldthorpe <cgold@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Phelps wrote:
> We are trying to develop context-sensitive help for our RCP application, 
> and are running into a number of issues.  For some of our views, our 
> documentation is correct and functional.  For others, however, we see a 
> variety of behaviors.
Pressing F1 causes the help system to go through different code to that 
which is taken when the view gets focus although they should have the 
same result if the view has set help correctly. If help is displayed as 
a result of a view focus event it will use the selected control as the 
basis for determining the help context, and if the selected control does 
not have a help context defined it will look at the parent control and 
ancestor controls until a control is found which has help defined, or a 
top level control is found.

What version of Eclipse are you using? The first problem sounds like a 
focus issue, sometimes this is related to the setFocus() routine in the 
view. The second issue is one where it appears to not be finding any 
context help based on the control that has focus and is displaying stale 
information. The display of stale information sounds the same as a bug 
that was fixed so if you can try Eclipse 3.5 you may find that problem 
no longer exists.

> - One view produces the correct help content when it gains focus from 
> another view, but does not provide the correct help when you press F1 on 
> the view directly.
>
> - Another view does not find content when F1'd, and shows the help 
> content from a previous view when it gains focus from that view.  The 
> "About View Name" header is correct for this view, but the content 
> remains that of the previous view.
>
> - Some of our malfunctioning views display the "Each workbench window 
> contains..." message, while others contain the "Click on any workbench 
> part..." message.
>
> We have examined all the code for these plugins, and the help context 
> seems to be set correctly (the 
> PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getHelpSystem().setHelp() is called from the 
> view's createPartControl()).  The context.xml and plugin.xml for the 
> documentation plugin seems correct and well-formed.  Using the Plug-In 
> spy, the active help context ID matches up with the ID in the context.xml.
>
> Finally, we have tried deploying this help plugin both in an Infocenter 
> and locally, and have tried both .jar format and as a folder structure.  
> In all cases, the behavior is similar.
>
> Has anyone seen similar behaviors, or have any suggestions on other 
> things we should try?
>
> Thanks very much
> Chris