Installing and managing the IBM WebSphere Help System

The following describes how to install and use the IBM^(R) WebSphere^(R) Help System with product or application documentation that has been packaged as Eclipse documentation plug-ins.

This documentation is intended for anyone who has received documentation in the form of Eclipse plug-ins, for example as part of an IBM software product, and wants to view that documentation in a standalone help browser.

About the help system

The IBM WebSphere Help System is a viewer for displaying product or application information developed as Eclipse documentation plug-ins. The system provides a graphical user interface for browsing and searching online documentation. The help system includes open source software developed by the Eclipse Project (www.eclipse.org) and only works with information that has been packaged as an Eclipse documentation plug-in.

Product or application developers can create their own documentation plug-ins for viewing by their users. To learn about creating and packaging documentation plug-ins, see the Eclipse Project www.eclipse.org.

Prerequisite software

To install and run the help system, you must have one of the following software environments:

Windows

Windows^(R) XP or Windows 2000.

One of the following Web browsers installed as your default system browser:

Minimum: Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5.5, or Mozilla-based browsers version 1.x or higher.

For best results: Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 6.0 or higher, or Mozilla-based browsers version 1.x or higher

LINUX

Linux on Intel^(TM) x86 -- (Motif-based window system): RedHat Linux 8; SuSE Linux 8.1.
Mozilla-based browsers version 1.x or higher.

To view PDF documents within the help system, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 4.05 or higher installed, and the Acrobat Web plug-in properly installed in your browser.

Installing the help system

Installing from a package that was downloaded from the Internet

To install the IBM WebSphere Help System unzip the supplied zip file on to your system, retaining the directory structure. The unzip creates a directory called ibm_help containing the IBM WebSphere Help System and embedded JRE. Please ensure that you have write permission to the ibm_help/eclipse directory.

Installing from a CD

If you have received the help system on a CD, you can run it from there. Alternatively, to improve performance, copy the contents of the CD to your hard drive and start the help system from there.

NOTE: If you have copied the Help system from the CD on to your PC you must ensure that you have write permission to the ibm_help/eclipse directory before attempting to start the Help system.

Starting the help system

The instructions given here are for starting the help system as a separately installed, standalone application.

To start a the help system from the hard drive,

Windows platform:

Open the ibm_help folder.

Double-click the help_start.bat file.

Other platforms:

Run the help_start.sh file.

To start a help system from a CD,

Windows platform:

Open the ibm_help folder.

Double-click the help_cd_start.bat file.

Other platforms:

Run the help_cd_start.sh file.

The help browser opens and the table of contents pane incorporates the documentation plug-ins that were found.

Note: The first time you start the help system, you might have to wait a short time before the browser opens and displays the information center.

Stopping the help system

When you close the help system browser, the help system processes continue to run in the background. (This enables a much faster launch during subsequent sessions.) You must stop these help system processes when you install documentation plug-ins or update the help system with new plug-ins. Completely shutting down the help system also frees up system memory.

To stop a help system that was started from the hard drive,

Windows platform:

Open the ibm_help folder.

Double-click the help_end.bat file.

Other platforms:

Run the help_end.sh file.

To stop a help system that was started from a CD:

Windows platform:

Open the ibm_help folder.

Double-click the help_cd_end.bat file.

Other platforms:

Run the help_cd_end.sh file.

Note: The help system uses a web server that is included with the system. The web server uses a random port to avoid port conflicts among applications, and by default the listener is disabled. If if you would this feature enabled, allowing it to serve pages within your enterprise, start and stop the Help system using the IC_start.bat / IC_stop.bat files on Windows platforms or the IC_start.sh / IC_stop.sh files on Linux platforms.

Installing new or updated documentation plug-ins

The help system works with any information that has been packaged as an Eclipse documentation plug-in, including IBM product documentation plug-ins. IBM documentation plug-ins are easily identified because they use a common directory naming convention (com.ibm.xxx.doc).

Prerequisite: The WebSphere Help System or an IBM product that includes the help system must be installed. To confirm whether you already have the help system installed, search your file system for a directory called eclipse\plugins.

To install or upgrade documentation plug-ins, complete the following steps:

Obtain the documentation plug-ins. For example, you might go to an IBM product Web page to download documentation plug-ins.
Copy the documentation plug-in folders to the eclipse\plugins folder of the directory where the help system is installed. For example on the Windows platform, if you installed the help system to c:\ibm_help, you would copy the documentation plug-in folders to: c:\ibm_help\eclipse\plugins.
To see the newly added documentation plug-in, start the help system (or shut it down and restart it if it was already running).