Hello Jan. 2017-11-09 0:17 GMT+01:00 Jan Tosovsky <[email protected]>:
> Btw, what is the source for NetBeans help? > XML files. Like those at https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans/tree/ master/usersguide/javahelp/org/netbeans/modules/usersguide > > Some content is now distributed as JavaHelp, some is hosted here: > https://docs.oracle.com/netbeans/nb82/netbeans/NBDAG/gs_ > nbeans.htm#NBDAG111 > > From my point of view: > > JavaHelp > + context sensitive help > + search capabilities > - HTML 3.2 with very limited CSS support > - ugly UI > JavaHelp is an old unmaintained crap. That is for sure. On the other hand it is a standard defining format that users of NetBeans Platform use to register their own help sets. > HTML based help (e.g. DocBook WebHelp) > + HTML5, responsivity > + search capabilities using Lucene search index > - context sensitive help needs a special handling: > (a) a special mapping 'context ID -> URL' is required > The mapping is defined by JavaHelp XML files like https://github.com/apache/ incubator-netbeans/blob/master/usersguide/javahelp/org/netbeans/modules/usersguide/map.xml and https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans/blob/master/usersguide/javahelp/org/netbeans/modules/usersguide/ide.hs <https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans/blob/master/usersguide/javahelp/org/netbeans/modules/usersguide/map.xml> > (b) as opening a browser and passing an URL with a fragment identifier > is buggy in Java, a special strategy has to be employed > > If the help source was DocBook, that WebHelp output could be generated > quite 'easily'. But in this case I'd rather recommend my fork (yet to be > distributed on GitHub) without jQuery/jQueryUI dependencies and with some > additional features (responsivity, breadcrumb). > If we could process the existing .hs and map.xml registration files, then I would more than welcome replacement of the ugly JavaHelp UI with something more fresh. -jt
