views:

70

answers:

3

I want to make a help/instructions page for my Java program but I really don't want to have to go through and program all the frames and searching and such. Is there a package or program that I can just insert the data into and it will read it and create the dialog? I couldn't seem to find anything about it on Google.

It doesn't have to look like this at all but I like having the table of contents and the search at least.

alt text

Thanks

+2  A: 

The windows help dialog you show is part of the Window Help subsystem. You could easily create a help file for that and launch it from your Java application, but it would be platform specific. If you want to implement cross-platform help functionality, you're probably going to have to implement it yourself, but you could probably do it simply by including a set of HTML resources and using an embedded lucene index to supply search functionalty.

Jherico
+4  A: 

Java help system : https://javahelp.dev.java.net/

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+2  A: 

Have you consider using a simple HTML based manual and/or website where all that information may be accessed through?

Pretty much like http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/ for instance where you have a main page and you can navigate the topics from there?

If that's a website ( rather than a local /doc directory ) you can have the extra benefit from having a full featured search engine index it for you.

See also: Google is the Help menu

After all, how many times do you use these help systems instead of searching the web?

OscarRyz
"After all, how many times do you use these help systems instead of searching the web?"lol never but this is a requirement for my project.
Mike