platform-help-home/standalone.html

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Revision 1.1 - (download) (as text) (annotate)
Tue Apr 16 15:59:14 2002 UTC (7 years, 7 months ago) by dbirsan
Branch: MAIN 
create standalone doc

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         Standalone
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               <b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color=
               "#FFFFFF">Stand-alone</font></font></b>
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               Stand-alone (local) - If you are creating an application that is
               not based on the Eclipse framework, you can still use the
               Eclipse help system. Your application can package and install
               the stand-alone help system, a very small version of Eclipse
               that has had everything except the help system stripped out of
               it. Then, your application can make API calls from its Help
               menu, or from UI objects, to launch the help browser. The
               stand-alone help system has all the features of the integrated
               help system, as described in the following sections. However, it
               interacts with the application UI for features such as
               context-sensitive help or active help will vary. All features
               except infopops and active help are supported. 
               <p>
                  <b>Installation/packaging</b>
               </p>
               <ol>
                  <li style="list-style: none">
                     These steps are for the help system integrator and are not
                     meant to address all the possible scenarios. It is
                     asssumed that you have java application that requires launching
                     help, and that all your documentation is delivered as
                     plugins and, in general, you are familiar with the eclipse
                     help system.
                  </li>
                  <li>
                     Install (unzip) Eclipse 2.0 driver under your applicatin directory, 
					 say, d:\myApp\. This will create an eclipse subdirectory, d:\myApp\eclipse 
					 that contains the plugins directory, etc.
                  </li>
				  <li>
				  	Optionally, until a trimmed down version of the stand-alone packaging is 
					provided, you can remove most of the plugins, and leave only org.apache.xerces, 
					org.apache.lucene, org.eclipse.core.boot, org.eclipse.core.runtime, org.eclipse.help,
					org.eclipse.help.ui, org.eclipse.help.webapp, org.eclipse.ui, org.eclipse.swt and
					org.eclipse.tomcat.
				  </li>
               </ol>
               <p>
                  <b>How to call the help classes:</b><br>
                  <ol>
				  	<li>
					Make sure <em>d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help\help.jar</em> is on your app classpath.
				  	</li>
					<li>
					org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help is the class that you should be using to start, launch and shutdown help.
					</li>
					<li>
					At some point, create an instance of the Help class by passing the plugins directory. 
					This object should be hold onto until the end of your app.
					<br>
					<em>Help helpSystem = new Help("d:\\myApp\\eclipse\\plugins");</em>
					</li>
					<li>
					Start the help system:
					<br>
					<em>helpSystem.start();</em>
					<br>
					At the end of your app, shutdown the help system:
					<br>
					<em>helpSystem.shutdown();</em>
					</li>
					<li>
					Invoke help when needed: <em>helpSystem.displayHelp();</em>
					<br>
					You can also call help on specific books or topics (make sure the url's are help specific,
					see the eclipse docs: "/pluginID/path/to/book.xml" or "/pluginID/path/to/topic.html")
					<br>
					<em>helpSystem.displayHelp("/pluginId/toc.xml")</em>
					</li>
					<li>
					To launch context sensitive help, call helpSystem.displayContext(contextId, x, y)
					where contextId is a fully qualified context id. The screen coordinates, x and y, are
					not currently used.
					</li>
				  </ol>
               </p>
               <p>
                  <b>Installing custom documentation:</b><br>
                  Eclipse comes with its own documentation.&nbsp; It will be
                  available in the infocenter by default.<br>
                  To have you own documentation show up, package the
                  documentation as Eclipse plugins.&nbsp; Install them to
                  d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\.&nbsp; To remove Eclipse documentation
                  that is in the infocenter default, delete following
                  directories:
               </p>
               <ul>
                  <li>
                     d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.jdt.doc.isv
                  </li>
                  <li>
                     d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.jdt.doc.user
                  </li>
                  <li>
                     d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.pde.doc.user
                  </li>
                  <li>
                     d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv
                  </li>
                  <li>
                     d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.platform.doc.user.
                  </li>
               </ul>
               <p>
                  <b>Customizing standalone look:</b><br>
                  TBD
               </p>
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