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The Eclipse 3.4 client allows users to import help data hosted in a remote infocenter. We need the same capability available in a Help System running in infocenter/WAR mode. The Eclipse help system base code is currently preventing us from doing this. There is a check in the method org.eclipse.help.internal.base.remote.RemoteHelp.isAllowed() which makes sure Remote content request are coming ONLY from non-Infocenters. The check is the following: isAllowed( ){ return (BaseHelpSystem.getMode() != BaseHelpSystem.MODE_INFOCENTER); }
Curtis probably knows more about the reasons why we don't allow this at present but I would think that one reason is that we don't want to have to support chained requests to remote help. Can you elablorate more on why you want to do this - allowing an Eclipse based product to reference remote help allows the help system to reference documentation which was created after the product was built, for an infocenter it seems that it would be more efficient to store all of the documents locally.
Hi, Guillermo, I just want to see if I understand the use case/system scenario. Are you asking for the following picture?: - A running infocenter (either regular Eclipse infocenter mode or deployed as a WAR) being able to integrate remote content into itself. - When a user is looking/browsing/searching content in that running infocenter (e.g., infocenterA), that user can see content that is actually contained/hosted in another running remote infocenter (e.g., infocenterB) - infocenterB can be either a regular Eclipse infocenter or deployed as a WAR ---------------------- Chris, if Guillermo confirms that that is the use case, I think it might be similar to a use case that was the basis of an older enhancement request originated by me on behalf of my previous employer: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=107618 In 107618, I talk mostly about search results; however, Guillermo's use case might be the broader umbrella thought. I never got back to that earlier Bugzilla as I am no longer with that employer. --Lee Anne
One of the benefits of remote assistance is the ability to "publish" content to a single location (i.e. a web information center) and wire the "local" help system to obtain content from that web site. Lets call this the basic remote assistance use case. The same use case is required for web based products. A Web application which is based on eclipse, and uses the help system (such as the Help.war), wants to deploy with a shell and some minimal content and get the "rest" of the content from a centrally managed information center on the web. Currently, the help system will not allow that to happen. I agree that daisy chaining can potentially happen, and that there is very little we could do (presently) to stop it. Additionally, the end user might not understand that it is happening, but it does require an intimate knowledge of the help system to set it up, so I don't think there will be much abuse (if any). For us, it would make Remote assistance more versatile, and allow us to use it in more situations, not just desktop applications.
The use case sounds ok to me. The reasons for disabling it were mainly performance, and preventing users from shooting themselves in the foot as this was not a supported/tested feature (we initially didn't think anyone would want to do this). Performance shouldn't be a major problem for just one remote server. Though I can't think of any new problems that this would present, areas that would need to be tested if this is enabled include: - Dynamic content - It is legal to have a remote toc under a local doc buried under yet another remote toc, for example. Same with contributions/extensions and replacements, they can come from anywhere and hook into anywhere. It is all designed to work as though the content were all local. - Search - Local and remote searches happen in parallel, then merge and sort results locally.
Created attachment 122598 [details] Patch for org.eclipse.help.base
Created attachment 122599 [details] Patch for org.eclipse.help.webapp
Patch committed.
