Книга: Embedded Linux development using Eclipse

1.4.4 Help

1.4.4 Help

The Eclipse Platform Help mechanism allows tools (plug-ins) to define and contribute documentation to one or more online books. For example, a tool usually contributes help style documentation to a user’s guide, and API documentation (if any) to a separate programmer’s guide.

Raw content is provided as HTML files. The facilities for arranging the raw content into online books with suitable navigation structures are expressed separately in XML files. This separation allows pre-existing HTML documentation to be incorporated directly into online books without the need to edit or rewrite.

The add-on navigation structure presents the content of the books as a tree of topics. Each topic, including non-leaf topics, can have a link to a raw content page. A single book may have multiple alternate lists of top-level topics allowing some or all of the same information to be presented in completely different organizations. They may be organized by task, or by tool, for example.

The XML navigation files and HTML content files are stored in a plug-in’s root directory or subdirectories. Small tools usually put their help documentation in the same plug-in as the code. Large tools often have separate help plug-ins. The Platform uses its own internal documentation server to provide the actual web pages from within the document web. This custom server allows the Platform to resolve special inter-plug-in links and to extract HTML pages from ZIP archives.

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