Display JavaHelp from Apache NetBeans in your local Browser

JavaHelp is an abandoned framework to display an "Online Help" in a Java SE Swing application. This system was used in NetBeans IDE and RCPs before the donation of the project to the Apache Foundation. Due to license issues this system had to be dismissed an is not replaced since.

This project is an attempt to replace the default JavaHelp system in Apache NetBeans with a local webserver and tries to reuse as much from the old JavaHelp pages as possible. The default implementation in this stand-alone module just sends the existing HTML file, stored in a nbdocs: location to the browser.

⚠️ The project is currently in an early alpha state. This means there is no "release" yet, and the API may change in any direction.

Implement an own Renderer

To replace the default "Renderer" you have to implement the inface de.rwthaachen.wzl.gt.nbm.nbhelp.api.HelpTemplate on your own class and register that implementation via @ServiceProvider as mentioned in HelpTemplate. Currently the method renderHelpPage will take a HelpRenderContext, but this will change in one of the next iterations as the "Context" only consists of the URL of the help resource and an OuputStream to write to.

The Renderer is in charge for the full HTML output to the browser. All other resources like images, scripts or style sheets are send to the browser directly.

Other static resources

You can provide other resources like HTML pages or images that are not part of the nbdocs: universe. These are all resources in the "root" of the local webserver and everything inside the path /nb-help/. The latter path can be branded in an RCP application (see de.rwthaachen.wzl.gt.nbm.nbhelp.HelpProxy).

The interface de.rwthaachen.wzl.gt.nbm.nbhelp.api.HelpContentHandler is used to register implementations that can "register" itself as "path handlers". They must create an URLConnection, but there is a utility class SimpleTextGenerator in the API that can be used to wrap any text content.

If you plan to provide your own /index.html you should register your implementation below position=100 as a default page is registered at that position.

Accessing the registered Helpsets

The default implementations of the JavaHelp classes are not used directly by this module. Only the HelpDisplayer class has to deal with some of the classes to handle the help requests from the user. For all implementations using this project the data package contains "all" nessesary data. The main accessor class is HelpsetManager if you want to find other help IDs or the registered HelpSets.

The module itself does only provide a default /index.html which displays the entry points of all registered HelpSets. No navigation or usage of the Views are implemented.