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"intelligent" help [message #473676]

Wed, 30 April 2008 07:55

Jenny

Messages: 22
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Hi,
I created a help and linked it into the project using an extension point.
No other plugin knows the
help but the help knows all the plugins.
I would like to have an "intelligent" help. That means that the help should
only be loaded if I need it (klicking on help-button for example).
If the help is not installed, there shouldn't be an action like help
contents.
Is there a way to do this?
I use eclipse 3.3

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Re: "intelligent" help [message #473677 is a reply to message #473676]

Wed, 30 April 2008 21:17

Chris Goldthorpe

Messages: 815
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

The help system will only start up if you do something to cause it to
start, such as hitting F1, clicking on a '?' button in a dialog or
selecting the menu command help/help contents. If the help view was open
when you exited Eclipse it will open up when you restart Eclipse,
otherwise the help system will not start up until it is needed.

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Re: "intelligent" help [message #473679 is a reply to message #473677]

Mon, 05 May 2008 11:49

Jenny

Messages: 22
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Okay, good to know.
But I still have a problem:
how do i know if the help is available or not?

because, even if there is no help installed, the help->help contents is
still available and it just open an empty help page.
how do i tell my programm, to just load it/make it awailable when the help
is installed?

Chris Goldthorpe wrote:

> The help system will only start up if you do something to cause it to
> start, such as hitting F1, clicking on a '?' button in a dialog or
> selecting the menu command help/help contents. If the help view was open
> when you exited Eclipse it will open up when you restart Eclipse,
> otherwise the help system will not start up until it is needed.

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Re: "intelligent" help [message #473682 is a reply to message #473679]

Mon, 05 May 2008 22:23

Chris Goldthorpe

Messages: 815
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

That's not so easy. The extension point which contributes the help menu
is set up to only activate the help system plugins when the menu is
selected. This is the way most workbench menus work in Eclipse to
minimize loading of plugins until they are required. I'm guessing that
you are building an RCP application. To hide the help menu when help was
not available you would need to write a small plugin with a class which
searched the extension registry to see if any plugins conrtibuted to the
org.eclipse.toc extension point. You would then use an enablement
expression on the org.eclipse.ui.actionSets extension point.

http://help.eclipse.org/help33/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse. platform.doc.user/tasks/tasks-68c.htm

An easier alternative would be to always provide at lest one page of help.

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