Installing the help system as an infocenter

You can allow your users to access the help system over the Internet or an intranet, by installing the infocenter and the documentation plug-ins on a server. Clients view help by navigating to a URL, and the help system is shown in their web browser. The infocenter help system can be used both for client applications and for web applications, either of which can have their help accessed remotely. All features of help system except infopops and active help are supported.

The infocenter help system allows passing number of options that can be used to customize various aspects of the infocenter. The following options are supported:

 

Installation/packaging

These steps are for the help system integrator and are not meant to address all the possible scenarios. It is assumed that all your documentation is delivered as Eclipse plug-ins and, in general, you are familiar with the eclipse help system.

  1. Download the Eclipse Platform Runtime Binary driver from www.eclipse.org.
  2. Install (unzip) the driver in a directory, d:\myApp. This will create an eclipse sub-directory, d:\myApp\eclipse that contains the code required for the Eclipse platform (which includes the help system).

 

How to start or stop infocenter from command line

The org.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter class has a main method that you can use to launch infocenter from a command line. The command line arguments syntax is:

-command start | shutdown | [-eclipsehome eclipseInstallPath] [-host helpServerHost] [-locales localeList] [-port helpServerPort] [-dir rtl] [-noexec] [platform options] [-vmargs JavaVMarguments]

To start an infocenter on port 8081 issue a start command by running

java -classpath d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.base_3.0.1\helpbase.jar org.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter -command start -eclipsehome d:\myApp\eclipse -port 8081

To shut the infocenter down issue a shutdown command by running

java -classpath d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.base_3.0.1\helpbase.jar org.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter -command shutdown -eclipsehome d:\myApp\eclipse

 

Use the infocenter

Start the web server. Point a web browser to the path "help" web application running on a port specified when starting the infocenter.  On the machine the infocenter is installed, this would be http://localhost:8081/help/.

 

How to start or stop infocenter from Java

When including infocenter as part of another application, it may be more convenient to start it and stop using Java APIs instead of using system commands. Follow the steps if it is the case:

  1. Make sure d:\myApp\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.help.base_3.0.1\helpbase.jar is on your app classpath. The class you use to start, and shut down the infocenter isorg.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter.
  2. Create an array of String containing options that you want to pass to the infocenter. Typically, the eclipsehome and port options are needed. 
    String[] options = new String[] { "-eclipsehome", "d:\\myApp\\eclipse" , "-port", "8081" };
  3. In your application, create an instance of the Help class by passing the options.
    Infocenter infocenter = new Help(options);
  4. To start the help system: 
    helpSystem.start();

  5. To shut the infocenter down:

    helpSystem.shutdown();

 

Making infocenter available on the web

Eclipse contains a complete infocenter and does not require other server software to run. However, in unsecure environment like Internet, it is recommended infocenter is not accessed directly by clients, but is made available through an HTTP server or an application server. Most servers come with modules or servlets for delegating certain request to other web resources. For example, one may configure a proxy module of Apache HTTP Server to redirect requests made to http://mycompany.com/myproduct/infocenter to http://internalserver:8081/help that runs an infocenter. Adding the lines 

LoadModule proxy_module modules/ApacheModuleProxy.dll
ProxyPass /myproduct/infocenter http://internalserver:8081/help
ProxyPassReverse /myproduct/infocenter http://internalserver:8081/help
to conf/httpd.conf file of Apache server running mycompany web site accomplishes this.

Some versions of Apache HTTP server, may contain AddDefaultCharset directive enabled in configuration file. Remove the directive or replace with 

AddDefaultCharset Off
to have browsers display documents using correct character set.

 

Running multiple instance of infocenter

Multiple instances of infocenter can be run on a machine from one installation. Each started instance must use its own port and be provided with a workspace, hence -port and -data options must be specified. The instances can serve documentation from different set of plug-ins, by providing a valid platform configuration with -configuration option.

If -configuration is not used and configuration directory is shared among multiple infocenter instances, with overlapping set of locales, it must be ensured that all search indexes are created by one infocenter instance before another instance is started. Indexes are saved in the configuration directory, and write access is not synchronized across infocenter processes.

 

[Optional] Installing a minimal set of plug-ins

The infocenter does not require the entire  Eclipse Platform package. It is possible to run the infocenter with the following plug-ins (located in the  eclipse\plugins directory):

org.apache.ant
org.apache.lucene
org.eclipse.core.runtime
org.eclipse.help
org.eclipse.help.appserver
org.eclipse.help.base
org.eclipse.help.webapp
org.eclipse.osgi
org.eclipse.tomcat
org.eclipse.update.configurator

Some documentation plug-ins may have dependencies on other plug-ins, usually by specifying required plug-ins in their plugin.xml. The dependent plug-ins need to be installed on the infocenter as well. Additionally, plug-ins that were designed for earlier than 3.0 version of Eclipse implicitly require an org.eclipse.core.runtime.compatibility being present plug-in to work.

Infocenter plug-ins can be updated without restarting the infocenter, using commands explained in Updating a running infocenter from command line topic. To use this functionality, the minimal set of plug-ins must include org.eclipse.update.core plug-in.

See Help System Preferences for more information on customizing help system.

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