JHelp - A replacement for JavaHelp on NetBeans

Disclaimer

The project is in an early state of development, so it is not advised to use it in real world applications. If you have feedback or feature suggestions, please create a new GitHub Issue.

Description

JHelp is a Maven NetBeans Module that should replace JavaHelp and the JavaHelp NetBeans Module.

Limitations

JHelp currently only supports a limited subset of features of JavaHelp and only HelpSets from the version 2.0.

Features it does support:

• Registering a HelpSet via annotation
• Toc and Index view and selection
• Viewing one HelpSet
• Netbeans HelpSet context
• Merging multiple HelpSets
• Fulltext search

Features it does not support:

• Favorites
• and more

Installation

To install JHelp in your locale maven repository clone and then run:

mvn clean install

Usage

First, make sure you followed to installation steps in ## Installation, since JHelp is currently not in any maven repo. To use the JHelp NetBeans module inside your NetBeans-Platform application, add the maven dependency to your Project pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>de.dhbw.mwulle</groupId>
    <artifactId>jhelp</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

Note: JHelp uses netbeans platform version RELEASE200

When setting up JHelp, you can either configure it manually or use the NetBeans IDE Wizard to let it create a simple HelpSet. You can find a demo repository here.

Manually

1. Create a package-info.java in the package which should house the HelpSet.
2. Add the @HelpSetRegistration annotation to the package-info.java and add the path to the hs file in the annotations helpset field. Note: The path is relative to the package the package-info.java is in.

   @HelpSetRegistration(helpSet = "Animals.hs")
   package de.derfrzocker.jhelp.demo.docs;
   
   import de.dhbw.mwulle.jhelp.netbeans.api.HelpSetRegistration;

3. Create a directory with the same path as the package of the package-info.java in your resource directory.
4. Now you can create your HelpSet in this directory with the hs being in the location set in the@HelpSetRegistration annotation.

Via NetBeans IDE Wizard

1. Select the module you want to create a HelpSet in.
2. Go to the New File wizard.
3. Go to the Module Development tab and select JavaHelp Help Set.
4. Go to the created package-info.java and change the import of the @HelpSetRegistration annotation from org.netbeans.api.javahelp.HelpSetRegistration to de.dhbw.mwulle.jhelp.netbeans.api.HelpSetRegistration.
5. Go to the pom.xml and delete the added org-netbeans-modules-javahelp dependency.
6. Modify the created HelpSet to your need.

License

JHelp is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.