Table of Contents (TOC)

Identifier:
org.eclipse.help.toc

Description:
For registering an online help contribution for an individual plug-in.
Each plug-in that contributes help files should in general do the following:

author the html files, zip html files into doc.zip, and store the zip file in the plug-in directory.
create TOC files that describe Table of Contents for the help and the necessary topic interleaving. See the syntax below.
the plugin.xml file should extend the org.eclipse.help.toc extension point and specify TOC file(s).

Configuration Markup:

<!ELEMENT extension (toc*)>

<!ATTLIST extension

point CDATA #REQUIRED
id    CDATA #IMPLIED
name  CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!ELEMENT toc EMPTY>

<!ATTLIST toc

file     CDATA #REQUIRED
primary  (true | false) "false"
extradir CDATA #IMPLIED>

file - the name of the TOC file which contains the table of contents or section for this plug-in's online help.
Configuration Markup for toc file:
    <!ELEMENT toc (topic | anchor | link)* >
    <!ATTLIST toc link_to CDATA #IMPLIED >
    <!ATTLIST toc label CDATA #REQUIRED >
    <!ATTLIST toc topic CDATA #IMPLIED >
    <!ELEMENT topic (topic | anchor | link )* >
    <!ATTLIST topic label CDATA #REQUIRED >
    <!ATTLIST topic href CDATA #IMPLIED >
    <!ELEMENT anchor EMPTY >
    <!ATTLIST anchor id ID #REQUIRED >
    <!ELEMENT link EMPTY >
    <!ATTLIST link toc CDATA #REQUIRED >
In general, a plug-in that needs to provide online help will define its own TOC files. In the end, the help system is configured to be launched as some actions, and the path of the TOC file can be used to do so.
The topic element
All help topic element are contributed as part of the toc container element. They can have a hierarchical structure, or can be listed as a flat list.
The topic element is the workhorse of structure of Table of Contents. There are two typical uses for the topic element:
1. To provide a link to a documentation file - usually an HTML file.
2. To act as a container for other toc, either in the same manifest or another.
1. Topics as links
The simplest use of a topic is as a link to a documentation file.
<topic label="Some concept file" href="concepts/some_file.html" />
The href attribute is relative to the plug-in that the manifest file belongs to. If you need to access a file in another plug-in, you can use the syntax
<topic label="topic in another plug-in" href="../other.plugin.id/concepts/some_other_file.html" />
2. Topics as containers
The next most common use of a topic is to use it as a container for other toc. The container topic itself can always refer to a particular file as well.
<topic label="Integrated Development Environment" href="concepts/ciover.htm" >
<topic label="Starting the IDE" href="concepts/blah.htm" />
...
</topic>
The link element
The link element allows to link Table of Contents defined in another toc file. All the topics from the toc file specified in the toc attribute will appear in the table of contents as if they were defined directly in place of the link element. To include toc from api.xml file you could write
<topic label="References" >
...
<link toc="api.xml" />
...
</topic>
The anchor element
The anchor element defines a point that will allow linking other toc files to this navigation, and extending it, without using the link element and referencing other toc files from here. To allow inserting Table of Contents with more topics after the "ZZZ" document you would define an anchor as follows:
...
<topic label="zzz" href="zzz.html" />
<anchor id="moreapi" />
...
The toc element
The toc element is a Table of Contents that groups topics and other elements defined in this file. The label identifies the table of contents to the user, when it is displayed to the user. The optional topic attribute is the path to a topic file describing the TOC. The optional link_to attribute allows for linking toc from this file into another toc file being higher in the navigation hierarchy. The value of the link_to attribute must specify an anchor in another toc file. To link toc from myapi.xml to api.xml file, specified in another plugin you would use the syntax
<toc link_to="../anotherPlugin/api.xml#moreapi" label="My Tool API"/>
...
<toc />
where # character separates toc file name from the anchor identifier.

primary - specifies whether the TOC file is a primary table of contents and is meant to be the master table of contents, or not primary and intended to be integrated into another table of contents.
extradir - specifies relative directory name of containing additional documents that are associated with the table of contents. All help documents in this directory, and all subdirectories, will be indexed, and accessible through the documentation search, even if topic elements in the TOC file do not refer to these documents.

Examples:
The following is an example of using the toc extension point.
(in file plugin.xml)
 <extension point=
"org.eclipse.help.toc"
>
  <toc file=
"maindocs.html"
 primary=
"true"
/>
  <toc file=
"task.xml"
/>
  <toc file=
"sample.xml"
 extradir=
"samples"
/>
 </extension>
(in file maindocs.xml)
<toc label="Help System Example">
<topic label="Introduction" href="intro.html"/>
<topic label="Tasks">
<topic label="Creating a Project" href="tasks/task1.html">
   <topic label="Creating a Web Project" href="tasks/task11.html"/>
   <topic label="Creating a Java Project" href="tasks/task12.html"/>
</topic>
<link toc="task.xml" />
<topic label="Testing a Project" href="tasks/taskn.html"/>
</topic>
<topic label="Samples">
<topic label="Creating Java Project" href="samples/sample1.html">
   <topic label="Launch a Wizard" href="samples/sample11.html"/>
   <topic label="Set Options" href="samples/sample12.html"/>
   <topic label="Finish Creating Project" href="samples/sample13.html"/>
</topic>
<anchor id="samples" />
</topic>
</toc>

(in file tasks.xml)
<toc label="Building a Project">
<topic label="Building a Project" href="build/building.html">
<topic label="Building a Web Project" href="build/web.html"/>
<topic label="Building a Java Project" href="build/java.html"/>
</topic>
</toc>

(in file samples.xml)
<toc link_to="maindocs.xml#samples" label="Using The Compile Tool">
<topic label="The Compile Tool Sample" href="compilesample/example.html">
<topic label="Step 1" href="compilesample/step1.html"/>
<topic label="Step 2" href="compilesample/step2.html"/>
<topic label="Step 3" href="compilesample/step3.html"/>
<topic label="Step 4" href="compilesample/step4.html"/>
</topic>
</toc>

Assuming more documents exists with the path starting with "samples", they will not be displayed in the navigation tree, but be accessible using search. It is due to the presence of "extradir" attribute in the element <toc file="sample.xml" extradir="samples" /> inside plugin.xml file. For example searching for "Creating Java Project" could return a document "Other Ways of Creating Java Project", which path is samples/sample2.html.
Internationalization The TOC XML files can be translated and the resulting copy (with translated labels) should be placed in nl/<language>/<country> or nl/<language> directory. The <language> and <country> stand for two letter language and country codes as used in locale codes. For example, Traditional Chinese translations should be placed in the nl/zh/TW directory. The nl/<language>/<country> directory has a higher priority than nl/<language>. Only if no file is found in the nl/<language>/<country>, the file residing in nl/<language> will be used. The the root directory of a plugin will be searched last.
The documentation contained in doc.zip can be localized by creating a doc.zip file with translated version of documents, and placing doc.zip in
nl/<language>/<country> or nl/<language> directory. The help system will look for the files under this directories before defaulting to plugin directory.

API Information:
No code is required to use this extension point. All that is needed is to supply the appropriate manifest files mentioned in the plugin.xml file.

Supplied Implementation:
The default implementation of the help system UI supplied with the Eclipse platform fully supports the toc extension point.

Copyright (c) 2000, 2003 IBM Corporation and others.
All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the Common Public License v1.0 which accompanies this distribution, and is available at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/cpl-v10.html