The Help System in the Eclipse Developer IDE is designed like the rest of the environment and is built with a plug-in architecture. Packaging the Java Help System as a Developer IDE Plug-in can significantly increase memory size requirements and cause the development environment to hang on install. This article discusses taking advantage of the Java Help System InfoCenter as a stand-alone Help System to be integrated into your Eclipse Developer Environment. This can be done in 3 easy steps.
Step 1: To get started, you must first ensure that you have installed the ArcGIS SDK Java Help System. This is a separate installer from ArcGIS Engine and/or ArcGIS Server for Java. Once successfully installed, the help system runs in single user mode as stand-alone help system for the Java developers. To set up the Java Help System in InfoCenter mode you simply execute the Java Help Server scripts located at '%ARCGISHOME%\java\ docs\'. To start the Help System in InfoCenter mode, execute the ‘startJavaHelpServer.bat’ file:
%ARCGISHOME%\java\docs\startJavaHelpServer.bat [<port>]
The default port the Java Help System InfoCenter will run on if you do not set the port when you execute the script will be ‘2112’. Clients can now access the Java Help System from any machine inside your network by pointing your web browser to the following url:
%ServerName%:2112\help\index.jsp
Step 2: Now that you have successfully started the Java Help System in InfoCenter mode, you can easily integrate the Help System into your Eclipse Developer IDE.
Make sure you have the latest supported Eclipse developer IDE, version 3.3.x, and open the Preferences dialog by selecting ‘Window->Preferences’ from the tools menu. In the Preference dialog, navigate to ‘Help->Content’ as shown in an illustration to the right.
Step 3: The Eclipse Help System needs to know the address (host/IP) and port of the remote server to integrate with the local system. Select the 'Include help content form a remote infocenter' checkbox and provide the following server information:
- Host: Put a valid Server Name or IP Address where the remote infocenter is located. In our example the server name is 'javabuild'.
- Path: '/help'.
- Select the 'Use Port' radio box and put '2112' in the port text box. The dialog should resemble the image below with your server name replacing 'javabuild'.
Click 'OK' to close the Preference dialog and open up the Eclipse Help System, 'Help->Help Contents', to see the ArcGIS Java Developer Help System integrated into your local Eclipse Help System.
The Java Help System InfoCenter is a stand-alone server and doesn’t require an additional Web Server. However, in a production environment, you may want to control important issues that are best handled by a Web Server. For example, you may want to redirect requests by setting up a proxy module in Apache. This is all possible for more advanced users of the java Help System InfoCenter.
