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3 :     <head><title>Eclipse V2 Help System</title>
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24 :     <h1>Eclipse User Assistance
25 :     Overview</font></h1>
26 :     <p>The Eclipse User Assistance is a component of the
27 :     Eclipse Platform whose mission is to provide for assisting users of Eclipse
28 :     applications in all phases of the usage cycle. It is not a single workbench
29 :     artifact but rather a collection artifacts tailored to provide a particular
30 :     flavor of assistance.</p>
31 :     <p>User Assistance component includes the following systems and mechanisms:</p>
32 :     <ul>
33 :     <li>Online Help system for serving traditional help documents</li>
34 :     <li>Initial User Experience (Welcome) support</li>
35 :     <li>Cheat sheets</li>
36 :     <li>UI Forms<font color="#800000">*</font></li>
37 :     <li>Samples</li>
38 :     <li>Eclipse Automation</li>
39 :     </ul>
40 :     <p><font color="#800000">* Although UI Forms are strictly an SWT-based toolkit for creating slick
41 :     user interfaces and are not directly aimed at user assistance, it is listed here
42 :     because its use over more traditional user interface choices improves their ease
43 :     of use.</font></p>
44 :     <p>In addition to the current technologies, User Assistance component is a
45 :     container for all ideas and mechanisms that serve the purpose of making Eclipse
46 :     applications easier to use both for new and returning users.</p>
47 :     <p>We will briefly describe each system or mechanism in the following text.</p>
48 :     <h2>Online Help</h2>
49 :     <p>
50 :     <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/help31/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/help.htm">
51 :     The Eclipse platform's help</a> facilities provide the raw building blocks to
52 :     structure and contribute documentation to the platform. It does not dictate
53 :     structure or granularity of documentation. You can choose the tools and
54 :     structure for your documentation that suits your needs.&nbsp;The help plug-in allows
55 :     you to describe your documentation structure to the platform using a table of
56 :     contents (toc) file.</p>
57 :     <p>Help system can be used in three modes:</p>
58 :     <ol>
59 :     <li><b>Integrated</font> </b>- If you are creating an Eclipse-based product,
60 :     the help system is automatically provided. You can launch the help browser
61 :     from the <b>Help</b> menu in the workbench, or through welcome or dynamic
62 :     help links.<br>
63 :     &nbsp;</li>
64 :     <li><b>Stand-alone (local)</font></b> - If you are creating an application
65 :     that is not based on the Eclipse framework, you can still use the Eclipse
66 :     help system. Your application can package and install the <i>stand-alone
67 :     help system</i>, a very small version of Eclipse that has had everything
68 :     except the help system stripped out of it. Then, your application can make
69 :     API calls from its <b>Help</b> menu, or from UI objects, to launch the help
70 :     browser. The stand-alone help system has all the features of the integrated
71 :     help system, as described in the following sections. However, it interacts
72 :     with the application UI for features such as context-sensitive help or
73 :     active help will vary. All features except dynamic help and active help are
74 :     supported.<br>
75 :     &nbsp;</li>
76 :     <li><b>Infocenter (served)</font></b> - You can also allow your users to
77 :     access the help system over the Internet or their intranet, by installing
78 :     the stand-alone help system and the documentation plug-ins on a server. The
79 :     application accesses the documentation by calling a URL, and the help system
80 :     is shown in their web browser. The infocenter help system can be used both
81 :     for client applications and for web applications, either of which can have
82 :     their help accessed remotely. All features except dynamic and active help
83 :     are supported. </li>
84 :     </ol>
85 :     <p align="center">
86 :     <img border="0" src="images/overview-help.png" width="600" height="450"></p>
87 :     <p align="center">
88 :     <img border="0" src="images/overview-dynamic-help.png" width="298" height="837"></p>
89 :     <h2>Initial User Experience (Welcome)</h2>
90 :     <p>
91 :     <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/help31/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/workbench_advext_intro.htm">
92 :     Initial User Experience</a> support provides for greeting the first time users
93 :     of an Eclipse application with a series of pages that are meant to introduce
94 :     him/her to the application and make the initial experience favorable. The
95 :     implementation can simply guide the user through the initial setup and then
96 :     offer common tasks to do in the application, offer tutorials, samples (for
97 :     development applications), links to online resources, news etc.</p>
98 :     <p>The trigger and lifecycle of the welcome support is controlled by the
99 :     workbench. If welcome content is registered, it will be opened on fresh startup.
100 :     Once closed, it can be reopened from the Help menu. In the most direct form,
101 :     welcome can be written using pure SWT widgets. However, a more typical scenario
102 :     is to use the support provided by the User Assistance intro component and author
103 :     welcome content as a series of web pages, using either XML, HTML or XHTML
104 :     format.</p>
105 :     <p>When XML or XHTML formats are used, welcome content can be particularly
106 :     flexible because content reuse, content contribution and dynamic content are
107 :     supported.</p>
108 :     <p align="center">
109 :     <img border="0" src="images/overview-welcome.png" width="480" height="379"></p>
110 :     <h2>Cheat sheets</h2>
111 :     <p>
112 :     <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/help31/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/workbench_advext_cheatsheets.htm">
113 :     Cheat sheets</a> are a type of assistive technology that is meant to lead users
114 :     through sequential tasks. They follow the user through steps, offer help links
115 :     for each, provide an option to perform the step for the user or let the user do
116 :     it herself. Cheat sheets are available from the Help menu but can be
117 :     programmatically opened whenever a task assistance is needed.</p>
118 :     <p align="center">
119 :     <img border="0" src="images/overview-cheatsheets.png" width="200" height="559"></p>
120 :     <h2>UI Forms</h2>
121 :     <p>
122 :     <a href="http://help.eclipse.org/help31/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/forms.htm">
123 :     UI Forms</a> is a toolkit based on SWT for creating powerful Web-like user
124 :     interfaces. It is not strictly part of user assistance but is used as a
125 :     technology for many User Assistance artifacts (implementation of initial user
126 :     experience for platforms that do not support embedded browser, dynamic help
127 :     view, cheat sheets etc.). For example, PDE multi-page editors use UI Forms
128 :     extensively:</p>
129 :     <p align="center">
130 :     <img border="0" src="images/overview-uiforms.png" width="460" height="433"></p>
131 :     <h2>Samples</h2>
132 :     <p>Samples are code artifacts that are imported into the workspace as projects
133 :     so that users can browse the code and lunch it. User Assistance provides support
134 :     for samples that ensures the code compiles correctly regardless of the settings
135 :     and the environment. When launched from the Welcome window, a Forms-based view
136 :     provides assistance for the sample.</p>
137 :     <p align="center">
138 :     <img border="0" src="images/overview-samples.png" width="298" height="422"></p>
139 :     <p align="left">
140 :     <font color="#800000">Support for samples will be reworked and opened up in the
141 :     coming releases. Watch User Assistance home page for design documents in the
142 :     near future.</font></p>
143 :     <h2>Eclipse Automation</h2>
144 :     <p>Eclipse Automation has two main aspects: tracking and playback. Tracking user
145 :     activity can be used for various purposes such as monitoring user actions,
146 :     recording these actions for further analysis, recording commands into groups
147 :     (macros) etc. The flip side is the process of affecting the workbench behavior
148 :     by playing these commands back, typically by executing a script. Although the
149 :     two processes are interrelated, the one does not necessarily require the other.
150 :     For example, although command sequences can be recorded and played back later,
151 :     the sequence of commands can also be hand-crafted. Similarly, sequence of
152 :     commands can be converted into an activity report without any further desire to
153 :     feed it back into the workbench.</p>
154 :     <p>The area of application automation is wide and there are many approaches
155 :     depending on the task (macro recording/playback, scripting, usage analysis,
156 :     automated GUI testing). The goal of Eclipse Automation is not to provide a
157 :     complete solution for all these approaches. Instead, it is limited to enabling
158 :     Eclipse platform to expose itself to all kinds of automation approaches that can
159 :     be contributed by the applications building on top of the platform.</p>
160 :     <p><font color="#800000">Eclipse Automation is currently in the design stage.
161 :     Watch User Assistance home page for design documents in the near future.</font></p>
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