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:
-vmargs -Xmx256M
increases memory available to the infocenter and will allow serving a larger book collection.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.
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] [-port helpServerPort] [-servertimeout timeout] [-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_2.1.0\help.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_2.1.0\help.jar org.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter -command shutdown -eclipsehome d:\myApp\eclipse
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/.
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:
String[] options = new String[] { "-eclipsehome", "d:\\myApp\\eclipse" , "-port", "8081" };
Infocenter infocenter = new Help(options);
helpSystem.start();
To shut the infocenter down:
helpSystem.shutdown();
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 http://internalserver:8081/help ProxyPassReverse /myproduct http://internalserver:8081/helpto conf/httpd.conf file of Apache server running mycompany web site accomplishes this.
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.lucene
org.apache.xerces
org.eclipse.core.boot
org.eclipse.core.resources
org.eclipse.core.runtime
org.eclipse.help
org.eclipse.help.appserver
org.eclipse.help.webapp
org.eclipse.tomcat
org.eclipse.update.core
In addition to these plugins, depending on the operating system or machine
architecture, you may need to also need to install the corresponding fragments
for the above plugins (when they exist). For example, on Windows, you need
to add the following fragments (also located in the eclipse\plugins directory):
org.eclipse.core.resources.win32
org.eclipse.update.core.win32