Modifying the Help

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Modifying the Help

GEDI's help documentation consists of five types of files - html files representing individual articles, images embedded in those articles, an xml file that holds the table of contents, a helpset file (.hs) that tells the ShowHelp.jar file how to present the help, and a map file (.jhm) that contains the paths of the html and image files referenced in the help. In order to add a file to the help, you have to:

1. Write a help topic article.
2. Add its contents to whichever main topic pages it falls under. For example, if you wish to add a topic about Loading/Displaying Images, you'd have to copy the text of the new article into the main Loading/Displaying html file and the main Images html file, as well.
3. Add it to the table of contents like so:

       <tocitem text="Topic" target="topic"/>

   Or, if the topic has subtopics, like so:

       <tocitem text="Topic" target="topic">
           <tocitem text="Subtopic 1" target="subtopic1"/>
           <tocitem text="Subtopic 2" target="subtopic2"/>
       </tocitem>

4. Add the targets to the map file, like so:

       <mapID target="subtopic1" url="../../html/Topic-Sub1.html" />
       <mapID target="subtopic2" url="../../html/Topic-Sub2.html" />

   The paths are relative to the location of the .jhm file. So in our example, the first ".." moves the path to the directory containing the .jhm file. The second ".." moves the path to the directory containing that directory. That directory contains the "html" folder, which contains the "Topic-Sub1.html" and "Topic-Sub2.html" files.
5. Update the search index. First, delete the JavaHelpSearch folder in the javahelp/bin folder. Then, from the command line, navigate to the folder containing the jhindexer.jar file. This should be the GEDI_Help/javahelp/bin folder. Use the following command to create a new search index (change the path to whichever directory has your html files):

       java -jar jhindexer.jar "../../html/*.html"

   Alternatively, you could navigate to the directory containing your html files and use the following command:

       java -jar "../javahelp/bin/jhindexer.jar" "*.html"

6. Run the LinkScript.exe script using the following command on the command line to update the left, right, up, and down links on the html files (once you've navigated to the LinkScript directory):

       LinkScipt.exe ".."

   If you've moved the LinkScript directory from the javahelp/bin directory (for example to the html directory), the command to use will look like this:

       LinkScript.exe "../../javahelp/bin"

   This tells the script where to find the Map.jhm and GEDIHelpTOC.xml files relative to the directory containing the LinkScript.exe file.

NOTE: If you want to change which article comes up by default when the help opens, modify the "homeID" attribute of the "maps" tag in the GEDIHelp.hs file.