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DTP Help-Helper Plug-in

The DTP Helper Plug-in improves the handling of help context IDs and search expressions in the Eclipse Data Tools Platform. By introducing an abstraction layer, it insulates UI plug-ins from the intricacies of help context IDs, allowing for greater flexibility and better dynamic context-sensitive help. Dev teams can focus on defining abstract help keys while documentation teams manage help context IDs and search expressions. This separation of responsibilities enhances the quality of help resources and reduces the impact on UI components. Discover the advantages of this innovative approach.

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DTP Help-Helper Plug-in

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  1. DTP Help-Helper Plug-in John Graham Eclipse Data Tools Platform (DTP) Project

  2. Dynamic Context-Sensitive Help • Current sequence • UI plug-in passes help context ID and search expression strings to Help system, using IContextProvider methods • Help system displays the content indexed to context ID, shows “Related Topics” in dynamic help view, using search expression • Problems • UI plug-in “owns” the hard coded help context ID and search expression strings • Changing a context ID or search expression string impacts the UI plug-in (requires rebuilding)

  3. DTP Helper-Help Plug-in • Goals • Simplify handling of help context IDs and search expressions for IContextProvider methods • More flexibility to refine context IDs and search expressions, improve the quality of context-sensitive help • Reduce impact to UI plug-ins and Java code • Strategy • Abstraction layer — insulates UI plug-ins from help context ID and context-specific help search expression strings

  4. DTP Helper-Help Plug-in • New Sequence • UI plug-in passes an abstract helpKey constant to the ContextProviderDelegate (DTP help-helper) • ContextProviderDelegate returns help context ID and search expression strings (contributed by C-S Help provider) • UI plug-in passes help context ID and search expression strings to Help system, using IContextProvider methods • Help system displays the content

  5. DTP Helper-Help Plug-in

  6. DTP Helper-Help Plug-in • Advantages • More flexible and extensible help infrastructure • More useful and precisely targeted dynamic context-sensitive help • Isolation of responsibilities • Dev teams create and own the abstract helpKey constant for each UI control • Doc teams create and own help context ID and search expression strings, mapping of helpKey-to-context ID and helpKey-to-search expression

  7. Supported Designs • Conventional “straight-through” mapping • C-S Help contributors: • Provide only contexts.xml files • Extend only org.eclipse.help.contexts • Parity with previous method • Context abstraction • C-S Help contributors: • Provide both helpKey-mapping properties files and contexts.xml files • Extend both org.eclipse.help.contexts and org.eclipse.datatools.help.helpKeyProperties

  8. Thank You! • Resources • DTP 1.6 builds (www.eclipse.org/datatools) • Documentation (wiki.eclipse.org/Data_Tools_Platform_Project) • Contacting us • DTP newsgroup • dtp-dev@eclipse.org mailing list • Here at EclipseCon: Bof, other Data Tooling talks

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