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         Installing Standalone Help
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<h1 style="background:#0080C0;color:#ffffff;">Installing the stand-alone help system</h1>
<p>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, except infopops and active help. </p>
<h2><b>Installation/packaging</b> </h2>
These steps are for the help system 
  integrator and are not meant to address all the possible scenarios. It is 
  assumed that the launching application is in Java, and that 
  all your documentation is delivered as Eclipse plug-ins and, in general, you are 
  familiar with the eclipse help system.
<ol>
  <li>Download the Eclipse 2.0 Release level Platform Runtime Binary driver from
  <a target="_blank" href="http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/">www.eclipse.org</a>.</li>
  <li>Install (unzip) the driver under your application directory, for 
  example, <var>d:\myApp</var>. This will create an eclipse subdirectory, d:\myApp\eclipse that 
  contains the code required for the Eclipse platform (which includes the help 
  system). </li>
</ol>
<h2><b>How to call the help classes</b></h2>
<ol>
  <li>Make sure <em><span style="font-style: normal">d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help_2.0.0\help.jar</span></em> is 
  on your app classpath. The class you use to start, launch, and shut down the help system is 
  org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help. </li>
  <li>In your application, create an instance of the Help class by passing the plugins 
  directory. This object should be held onto until the end of your application.<pre><em><span style="font-style: normal">Help helpSystem = new Help(&quot;d:\\myApp\\eclipse\\plugins&quot;);</span></em> </pre>
  </li>
  <li>To start the help system:
  <pre><em><span style="font-style: normal">helpSystem.start();</span></em> </pre>
  <p>At the end of your application, to shutdown the help system: </p>
  <pre><em><span style="font-style: normal">helpSystem.shutdown();</span></em> </pre>
  </li>
  <li>To invoke help when needed:
  <pre><em><span style="font-style: normal">helpSystem.displayHelp();</span></em> </pre>
  <p>You can also call help on specific primary TOC files or topics:</p>
  <pre>helpSystem.displayHelp(&quot;/com.mycompany.mytool.doc/toc.xml&quot;);
helpSystem.displayHelp(&quot;/com.mycompany.mytool.doc/tasks/task1.htm&quot;);</pre>
  </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>
<h2><b>Testing stand-alone help</b> </h2>
<p>The org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help class has a simple main program that you 
can launch and see how the stand-alone help works out of the box. From a command 
line, run the following command:</p>
<pre>java -classpath d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help_2.0.0\help.jar 
org.eclipse.help.standalone.Help d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins</pre>


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