product name not being picked up in Infocenter

[H_Too_Oh]

I've got two Eclipse Infocenters that I generated using Oxygen, generating Eclipse Help from a bookmap ditamap, and I've got them deployed in .war archives in an Apache Tomcat server as standalone help. I've made all of the branding and customizations I needed, but one thing that remains is the title that appears in the browser tab when viewing the infocenter. I've got everything set up the way I've seen recommended, in multiple places, but nothing seems to work.

I see simply "Help - ", where my product name should be inserted after hyphen. I can remove the "Help - " prefix by changing a setting in the properties.ini file, but then since it's entirely empty, the tab title defaults to my ip address.

My understanding is that that title comes from the "product name" inserted in the plugins.properties file, and mine includes it. I can include the contents of that plus my plugins.xml and config.ini files, which seem to be related to this subject.

I am getting one last error message from Tomcat when these deploy, after resolving all the other ones. It looks like this:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.update.configurator 4 0 2012-04-14 17:56:38.300
!MESSAGE Unable to find feature.xml in directory: /apache-tomcat/work/Catalina/localhost/com.xxx.xxx/eclipse/features/org.eclipse.help.infocenter_feature_1.0.0.jar

I've tried to resolve this various ways from info I found online, but no luck so far. The feature.xml file is inside the .jar file, and seems to contain the required info. I don't know if this is related to the title/product name issue.

One reason I'm curious to ask here is that one other forum post elsewhere described precisely the same symptoms with the missing browser title, and he happened to mention that he had generated his Eclipse Help from Oxygen XML also. I think it's more likely that we both just missed something, but just wondering if anyone here in particular would have any clues. Thanks for any advice,



plugin.xml

<plugin id="com.xxx.xxx" name="XXX Reference Guide">

<extension point="org.eclipse.help.toc">
<toc file="xxx_xxx_.xml" primary="true"/>
</extension>
<extension point="org.eclipse.help.index">
<index file="index.xml"/>
</extension>

<extension id="helpProduct" point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.products">
<product name="XXX Reference Guide" application="" />
</extension>

</plugin>

config.ini

#Eclipse Runtime Configuration File
#Substitute the product name below with the name of your product plugin if you want to be able to
#customize the help appearance

#eclipse.product=org.eclipse.productname

eclipse.product=com.xxx.xxx.helpProduct

plugin.properties

# NLS_MESSAGEFORMAT_NONE
# NLS_ENCODING=UTF-8
name=ABC Reference Guide

providerName=DITA

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

I see simply "Help - ", where my product name should be inserted after hyphen.

The title of your help plugin should come from the label attribute of the toc element (the root element) from your file xxx_xxx_.xml which holds the Table of Contents and which you declared by:

Code: Select all

<extension point="org.eclipse.help.toc">

  <toc file="xxx_xxx_.xml" primary="true"/>

</extension>

My understanding is that that title comes from the "product name" inserted in the plugins.properties file, and mine includes it. I can include the contents of that plus my plugins.xml and config.ini files, which seem to be related to this subject.

Please post all these files or better send them as a zip archive (for preserving the directory structure) via our problem report page.

I am getting one last error message from Tomcat when these deploy, after resolving all the other ones. It looks like this:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.update.configurator 4 0 2012-04-14 17:56:38.300
!MESSAGE Unable to find feature.xml in directory: /apache-tomcat/work/Catalina/localhost/com.xxx.xxx/eclipse/features/org.eclipse.help.infocenter_feature_1.0.0.jar

I've tried to resolve this various ways from info I found online, but no luck so far. The feature.xml file is inside the .jar file, and seems to contain the required info. I don't know if this is related to the title/product name issue.

You should place the feature.xml file in unpacked version on the server, that is outside of a jar file. Just place it in a directory of the server and specify that directory in the server configuration file instead of the jar file org.eclipse.help.infocenter_feature_1.0.0.jar.


Regards,
Sorin

[H_Too_Oh]

Hi Sorin,

The title of your help plugin should come from the label attribute of the toc element (the root element) from your file xxx_xxx_.xml which holds the Table of Contents and which you declared by:

Right, that makes sense. My root xxx.xxx.xml doc does have what I want in the label tag, but it's not making its way to the <title> </title> tag of the html that's being generated as the Infocenter, that is, what appears in the browser tab as text.

You should place the feature.xml file in unpacked version on the server, that is outside of a jar file. Just place it in a directory of the server and specify that directory in the server configuration file instead of the jar file org.eclipse.help.infocenter_feature_1.0.0.jar.

Thanks. That cleared that error message. It didn't make anything else work, unfortunately, I was hoping somehow that was the problem with this other issue.

I'll post my files to the problem report page, good to know about that.

Another angle on this while I'm here: Just now I managed to at least get the plugin_customization.ini file inside my plugin to be used when launching my plugin directly in Eclipse, by using a -pluginCustomization argument in the command line:. The full command looks like this with the customization argument in bold:

java -classpath /Applications/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.help.base_3.6.2.v201202080800.jar org.eclipse.help.standalone.Infocenter -pluginCustomization /Applications/eclipse/plugins/cust_plugin/plugin_customization.ini -command start -eclipsehome /Applications/eclipse -port 8081

Isn't there a way to accomplish this also with my plugin inside a .war file? Because that's how I'm launching it, in Tomcat, I'm not usually using Eclipse, I only did to test that out to see if I had everything arranged correctly. In the .war archive, my plugin_customization.ini file is never being found and has no effect. The command won't work I think, I'm just starting Apache Tomcat with the command line, so there must be something needed inside the .war?

May be outside the scope of this forum but if anyone has a clue, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks again,

[sorin_ristache]

Hi,

I'll post my files to the problem report page, good to know about that.

We will look at your files once you send them.


Regards,
Sorin

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

I'll post my files to the problem
report page, good to know about that.

Thank you for the zip file but it contains many jar files. What is the Eclipse Help plugin that you generated in Oxygen and that is not displayed in the Help Infocenter? What is the product title and where is it specified? In what jar files are the help files located?


Regards,
Sorin

[H_Too_Oh]

Hi,

Just to be clear first: The product plugin is being displayed in the Infocenter. Everything works except the product name being picked up to go in the browser tab.

The product plugin is the directory located here:

Code: Select all

/spf-doc/output/war_out/com.pfm.rfp/WEB-INF/plugins/com.pfm.rfp

The rest of the .jar files surrounding it compose the standalone implementation of an Eclipse Infocenter, as described in these instructions:

http://help.eclipse.org/indigo/index.js ... dalone.htm

Those never worked for me, but I found a war file posted here that he created using those instructions with some modifications for errors, and it worked for me:

http://www.ipov.net/apps/blog/2011/01/e ... s-web-app/

The product name as I understand it is supposed to be picked up from the file here:

Code: Select all

spf-doc/output/war_out/com.pfm.rfp/WEB-INF/configuration

in conjunction with this one:

Code: Select all

/spf-doc/output/war_out/com.pfm.rfp/WEB-INF/plugins/com.pfm.rfp/plugin.xml

I've tried many configurations with all of these files, from suggestions I've found online, the ones I've sent you here are close to what comes out of Oxygen in the Eclipse Help output.

I've customized the way my plugin appears in my Infocenter, branding it with graphics and banner and so on, by inserting my graphics and edits in those jar files, for example org.eclipse.help.base_3.5.2.v201009090800.jar and so on, just replacing the default graphics and files there (exploding the jar files and then compressing them again) since I could never get this more standard customization method to work, so that's one reason I included them.

Let me know if I can supply any more background or details.

Thanks,

[sorin_ristache]

Hi,

The product plugin is the directory located here:

Code: Select all

/spf-doc/output/war_out/com.pfm.rfp/WEB-INF/plugins/com.pfm.rfp

The file com.pfm.rfp\WEB-INF\plugins\com.pfm.rfp\PFM_RFP_Response.xml is declared as the Table of Contents file in the plugin descriptor com.pfm.rfp\WEB-INF\plugins\com.pfm.rfp\plugin.xml and it starts with:

Code: Select all

<toc label="..." topic="preface.html">

That means the help title from the label attribute should be displayed in the Infocenter.

The rest of the .jar files surrounding it compose the standalone implementation of an Eclipse Infocenter, as described in these instructions:

http://help.eclipse.org/indigo/index.js ... dalone.htm

Those never worked for me, but I found a war file posted here that he created using those instructions with some modifications for errors, and it worked for me:

http://www.ipov.net/apps/blog/2011/01/e ... s-web-app/

...

I've customized the way my plugin appears in my Infocenter, branding it with graphics and banner and so on, by inserting my graphics and edits in those jar files, for example org.eclipse.help.base_3.5.2.v201009090800.jar and so on, just replacing the default graphics and files there

It seems a problem of Infocenter setup. I am sorry, I don't know why the help title from the label attribute is not displayed in the Infocenter. Maybe other users with more Infocenter knowledge know the answer.


Regards,
Sorin

[H_Too_Oh]

Thanks, no problem, it's been a mystery for a while now.

One other question, since Oxygen has an "Eclipse Plugin" transformation built in, do you have any examples of that working as an Infocenter help plugin where the title is picked up in the browser tab, I mean even using Eclipse to deploy it? Since that's really the only other way to deploy an Eclipse plugin, other than packaging it in a .war file as I'm doing, to be deployed in an Apache Tomcat server.

I know this can be done since I was packaging Eclipse Help plugins last year into a .war file and deploying them the same way. And the browser title worked. Unfortunately I don't have access to the .war file template/model I was using then, and the plugin was generated from a different xml editing tool.

[sorin_ristache]

One other question, since Oxygen has an "Eclipse Plugin" transformation built in, do you have any examples of that working as an Infocenter help plugin where the title is picked up in the browser tab, I mean even using Eclipse to deploy it?

The Oxygen User Manual for the Oxygen plugin for Eclipse was created using the Eclipse Help transformation. When the Oxygen plugin is installed the user manual is displayed in the Eclipse SDK platform from menu Help -> Help Contents.

We do not have an example working as an Infocenter plugin.


Regards,
Sorin

[H_Too_Oh]

Okay thanks, that's useful to know. I'll crank up Eclipse and see if I can make some sense of it from that direction. My plugin also works as a help plugin if I deploy it using Eclipse, but the browser title still isn't there.

[H_Too_Oh]

I got this resolved, finally. Everything was set up pretty much the right way except for this:

Inside my product plugin is: META-INF/MANIFEST.MF, and the manifest.mf file contains:

Bundle-Version: 0.0.0
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2
Bundle-Localization: plugin
Bundle-Name: %name
Bundle-Vendor: %providerName
Eclipse-LazyStart: true
Bundle-SymbolicName: customization.test; singleton:=true

Bundle-SymbolicName: has to be followed by the plugin id, not the plugin name. When the Eclipse Help transformation generates the manifest.mf file, it seems to pick up the symbolic name entry from the name of the plugin directory. So I changed the plugin directory name and the plugin id so that they match.

Here's what my plugin.xml file looks like now:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<plugin name="test name" id ="customization.test">
<extension point="org.eclipse.help.toc">
<toc file="customization_test.xml" primary="true"/>
</extension>

<extension id="helpProduct" point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.products" >
<product name="Test Label" application=""/>
</extension>

<extension point="org.eclipse.help.index">
<index file="index.xml"/>
</extension>

</plugin>

"Test Label" now appears in my browser tab. I could also use <product name="%productName" in the plugin.xml file and then it would pick up a productName entry that I could put in the plugin.properties file instead, which I'll probably want to do, but this was the first time I had anything at all in the browser tab other than generic default info.

Which brings me to my next question: Now that I have all of the customization working, how can I get the plugin.xml to be generated to look like above? What comes out of the Eclipse Help transformation from Oxygen looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<plugin>

<extension point="org.eclipse.help.toc">
<toc file="customization_test.xml" primary="true"/>
</extension>

<extension point="org.eclipse.help.index">
<index file="index.xml"/>
</extension>

</plugin>

It's just lacking the middle extension, plus not using a plugin name or id, just <plugin>. I could add those things with a script after generating the plugin from Oxygen but there's probably a better way.

I also now have to figure out how to generate the Infocenter HTML pages (splash page and banner) and the css that controls them, plus the plugin_customization file, since these all now go right in my product plugin. Up to now, I had them hard-wired into the .jar files that make up the .war file template, into which I put my product plugin. That way they weren't erased each time I generated a plugin, since the .war file template structure stayed put. I don't think this will be a problem, but I haven't tried yet. I assume I can just include any HTML pages at the top level and they'll go through. Can I include something like a plugin_customization.ini just as part of the project?

Thanks,

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

Which brings me to my next question: Now that I have all of the customization working, how can I get the plugin.xml to be generated to look like above?
. . .
It's just lacking the middle extension, plus not using a plugin name or id, just <plugin>. I could add those things with a script after generating the plugin from Oxygen but there's probably a better way.

A better way would be to modify the DITA transformation for Eclipse Help output. You will need to modify an XSLT stylesheet from DITA Open Toolkit. Please look at the XSLT template

Code: Select all

<xsl:template match="*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]" mode="eclipse.plugin">

from file

Code: Select all

[Oxygen-install-dir]/frameworks/dita/DITA-OT/xsl/map2pluginImpl.xsl

and uncomment the fragment that is commented. That fragment adds the name and id attributes to the plugin element. Of course you can add in this template an extension for the "org.eclipse.core.runtime.products" point.


Regards,
Sorin

[H_Too_Oh]

That worked perfectly, thanks.

This may seem like a simple question, but can you tell me how I can include a plugin_customization.ini file, and two HTML files, inside the generated product plugin folder? I don't want or need the HTML pages to be generated as dita topics, just simple HTML for the interface. I can't seem to get how this is done.

I have the .war file bundling automated, so that Oxygen generates the product plugin in the right place inside an expanded .war structure, then a script bundles the entire structure into the .war file and deploys it in Tomcat. So after clicking "Transform now" in Oxygen I can go directly to the URL and see the Infocenter with my changes. To get this branding though, the last thing remaining that I have to do by hand is insert these into the product plugin before bundling the .war file:

plugin_customization.ini
banner.html
footer.html

These will be different for different products, so they need to be generated with each bookmap separately.

If I build an HTML file inside of Oxygen, put a reference to it from the bookmap and mark it "toc=no", I don't get the file included in the customization.test plugin directory output. And I don't know how to insert the plugin_customization.ini file at all.

Thanks,

[H_Too_Oh]

I figured out another way to do this: I can just leave the output directory in place, with those html and .ini files I need inside of it, then set up the script a different way so one particular xml file from the output generation from Oxygen triggers the script.

There is one other thing I wanted to mention: One of the reasons that the Eclipse Standalone Help Infocenter deployed in a .war file wasn't working was white space before and after the <mainbooktitle> tag. I don't think it's just Oxygen, possibly the DTD, or even just DITA. It caused a problem with the plugin.properties file in particular, putting the name on another line. Actually I think it's not just white space but read as a carriage return. Here was the result in the plugin.xml file:

Code: Select all

<plugin name="&#xA;  Customization Test&#xA; 

and in the plugin.properties file:

Code: Select all

# NLS_MESSAGEFORMAT_NONE

# NLS_ENCODING=UTF-8

name=

  Customization Test

  

providerName=DITA

In the plugin.properties file the name read as empty and thus wouldn't be picked up where it needed to go. I can just edit it after the files are generated, but that breaks the automation of course, so instead I can fix it in the source by viewing the bookmap xml as text in Oxygen and removing any white space between the tags, but I seem to have to do it each time I open the map, it won't save that way. That is, by default (and each time I open it) it's like this:

Code: Select all

<bookmap id="customization.test">

     <booktitle>

     <mainbooktitle>Customization Test</mainbooktitle>

      </booktitle>

and has to be like this:

Code: Select all

<bookmap id="customization.test"><booktitle><mainbooktitle>Customization Test</mainbooktitle></booktitle>

The product name issue was because of several things that need to be tweaked with the war file and plugin, not just that, but that was one of the reasons it wasn't working.

Thanks,

[sorin_ristache]

There is one other thing I wanted to mention: One of the reasons that the Eclipse Standalone Help Infocenter deployed in a .war file wasn't working was white space before and after the <mainbooktitle> tag. I don't think it's just Oxygen, possibly the DTD, or even just DITA. It caused a problem with the plugin.properties file in particular, putting the name on another line. Actually I think it's not just white space but read as a carriage return. Here was the result in the plugin.xml file:

Code: Select all

<plugin name="&#xA;  Customization Test&#xA; 

and in the plugin.properties file:

Code: Select all

# NLS_MESSAGEFORMAT_NONE

# NLS_ENCODING=UTF-8

name=

  Customization Test

  

providerName=DITA

You don't have to edit the bookmap XML file and remove the spaces. You can fix the value of the name attribute in plugin.xml by replacing in the map2pluginImpl.xsl stylesheet

Code: Select all

<xsl:value-of select="*[contains(@class, ' topic/title ')]"/>

with:

Code: Select all

<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(*[contains(@class, ' topic/title ')])"/>

Regards,
Sorin

[H_Too_Oh]

Great. That works for the plugin.xml file. The other problem was in the plugin.properties file, which is a template a little further down in the same stylesheet. Could you possibly tell me how to modify this to accomplish the same?

When I try inserting

Code: Select all

normalize-space(

...in a similar place (lines 9 or 10, in the code sample below) I get errors, but I don't know how the syntax works, clearly:

Code: Select all

  



1. <xsl:template match="*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]" mode="eclipse.properties">

2. <xsl:text># NLS_MESSAGEFORMAT_NONE</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>

3. <xsl:text># NLS_ENCODING=UTF-8</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>

4. <!--<xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>-->

5. <xsl:choose>

6. <xsl:when test="@title">

7. <xsl:text>name=</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="@title"/>

8. </xsl:when>

9. <xsl:when test="*[contains(@class, ' topic/title ')]">

10. <xsl:text>name=</xsl:text><xsl:apply-templates select="*[contains(@class,' topic/title ')]" mode="text-only"/>

11. </xsl:when>

12. <xsl:otherwise>

13. <xsl:text>name=Sample Title</xsl:text>

14. </xsl:otherwise>

15. </xsl:choose>

16. <xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>

17. <xsl:text>providerName=</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="$provider"/>

18. </xsl:template>
  

(That's the unedited original, the comment in it is not mine).

This is the template that produces the eclipse.properties file, which is the one that causes the browser tab label to be blank. It looks like this:

Code: Select all

# NLS_MESSAGEFORMAT_NONE

# NLS_ENCODING=UTF-8

name=

  Customization Test

  

providerName=DITA

Thanks a lot,

[H_Too_Oh]

Sorry, small correction: That's called the plugin.properties file. It's produced as part of the product plugin. The template seems to be called eclipse.properties, but the output text in it all matches the output in the plugin.properties file.

[sorin_ristache]

Hi,

When I try inserting

Code: Select all

normalize-space(

...in a similar place (lines 9 or 10, in the code sample below) I get errors, but I don't know how the syntax works, clearly:

Please replace the whole template

Code: Select all

<xsl:template match="*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]" mode="eclipse.properties">

with the following:

Code: Select all

  <xsl:template match="*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]" mode="eclipse.properties">

    <xsl:text># NLS_MESSAGEFORMAT_NONE</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>

    <xsl:text># NLS_ENCODING=UTF-8</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>

    <!--<xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>-->

      <xsl:variable name="nameLine">

        <xsl:choose>

          <xsl:when test="@title">

            <xsl:text>name=</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="@title"/>

          </xsl:when>

          <xsl:when test="*[contains(@class, ' topic/title ')]">

            <xsl:text>name=</xsl:text><xsl:apply-templates select="*[contains(@class,' topic/title ')]" mode="text-only"/>

          </xsl:when>

          <xsl:otherwise>

            <xsl:text>name=Sample Title</xsl:text>

          </xsl:otherwise>

        </xsl:choose>

      </xsl:variable>

      <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space($nameLine)"/>

      <xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>

    <xsl:text>providerName=</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="$provider"/>

  </xsl:template>

Regards,
Sorin

[H_Too_Oh]

I replaced the template with that, and the plugin.properties file now has none of the content from before except the book title, followed by every topic title in the book and what looks like maybe short descriptions in some cases.

Code: Select all

<book title>

     <topic title>



<topic title><topic title>

   <topic title>

...and so on. I can send you the file if that would be useful?

[sorin_ristache]

It worked on the DITA map that I used. How is the title specified in your map? It should work on a map title like the following:

Code: Select all

<bookmap>

    <booktitle>

        <mainbooktitle>Customization Test</mainbooktitle>

    </booktitle>

    ...

Regards,
Sorin

[H_Too_Oh]

I just tried it on a simpler bookmap and had the same result, it looks like this:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE bookmap PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA BookMap//EN" "bookmap.dtd">

<bookmap id="customization.test">

    <booktitle> 

        <mainbooktitle>Customization Test</mainbooktitle></booktitle>

    <bookmeta>

        <prodinfo>

            <prodname>CustomizationTest</prodname>

            <vrmlist>

                <vrm version=""/>

            </vrmlist>

        </prodinfo>

    </bookmeta>

    <part>

        <chapter href="customization_test_chap.dita">

            <topicref href="customization_test_topic.dita"/>

        </chapter>

    </part>

</bookmap>

To be clear, I'm replacing the entire template that starts and ends with:

Code: Select all

 



<xsl:template match="*[contains(@class, ' map/map ')]" mode="eclipse.properties">

...

 <xsl:text>providerName=</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="$provider"/>

  </xsl:template>

with what you posted above.

Using an "Eclipse Help" transformation.

In any case it seems now if I just remove the spaces in the DITA source file, it does now save that way, I'm not sure why it didn't seem to earlier. So I can just save them all that way for these projects, that will be fine.

Thanks for the help,

[H_Too_Oh]

Hi Sorin,

I got your replacement template working. I had commented the old one out and put yours below it, everything looked correct with the comment marks, the old one was totally grayed out, I tried several more times and double-checked everything, but it wasn't working. Finally I tried deleting the old one entirely and pasting yours in, and that worked. I inserted some spaces between the booktitle tags to test it and now it removes them.

Who knows what I had done, but anyway just to let you know, and thanks again.

[sorin_ristache]

OK, it's great to hear that it worked for you too.


Regards,
Sorin