how to create help system in java

Question

We are developing new web application and we must integrate help in it. Does anyone know any good opensource help application that we can integrate it in our system or is better to develop help center from scratch? We are using java 1.6. Help must be related to articles, forms,...

Thx

Answer 1

Some years ago, I worked with the Eclipse Help System. Eclipse is not necessarily needed to integrate it in your project. Its helpfiles are also based on .html pages. Unfortunatly I dont know if they continue developing it, but at this time it already provided all the aspects you would expect from a help system.

There are a lot examples out there on how to integrate it in your project, but its possible, that maybe there are already better frameworks today.

Answer 2

We use JavaHelp and we are happy with it. We use docbook for document source and XSLT to generate the JavaHelp (and PDF and HTML versions).

JavaHelp is "GNU General Public License - Version 2 with the class path exception", as mentioned at the bottom of https://javahelp.java.net/ Note the link is broken, google finds this copy of the license: http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html

In summary, the Jar can be included in closed source applications.

Sorry, can't add a comment to other people's posts because I don't have enough points.