For the web application we are currently working on, we will have to think in advance on how to roll it out to a number of different user groups. From a functional side it is important to have a documentation system in place that can be used to generate a user guide and context-sensitive help from the same source files.
We have planned to use DITA as documentation system and are now thinking about an easy and extensible way to let developers specify elements that provide context-sensitive help and can be populated by the technical writers and trainers.
Based on DITA we would like to generate a user guide in PDF and context-sensitive help integrated into a JSP-based web application. What recommendations do you have?
We are already in the process of evaluating a commercial application that has the following features
authoring tool to identify elements on a web page that will be populated with help information
integration with learning management systems
support for applications that are not web-based
Do you have any framework recommendations? In addition to the above, the following would be great
integrate with DITA (in any conceivable way)
user group specific content (user retrieved from web application)
can be used from within a simple web application to show (html) tool tips
association of help context with the following hierarchy: application > page > element (HTML id?)
DITA is a document architecture, not a tool. So it does not constrain your choices for an authoring tool, or for producing PDF and on-line Help from your DITA source. It's not clear what sort of on-line Help you have in mind, but it sounds more like you want HTML pages that can be displayed by the application itself than a tripane like CHM.
There are several tools that will generate your outputs from DITA. The DITA-OT (Open Toolkit) is a FOSS tool on Sourceforge that can make XSL-FO, from which you can produce PDF, and also HTML, CHM, and a few more. Then there is free DITA2Go http://dita2go.com which makes Word RTF for PDF production, as well as HTML and several forms of on-line Help; it uses the topic ID attribute as part (or all, if you want) of the HTML file names. Plus there are commercial programs, though not with much of a benefit over DITA2Go.
You are best off not to think of PDF as an on-,line Help delivery format, but just as a version that customers can print out and use as hard copy. And tooltips are really up to your Web application more than a help-generating tool.
Related
I want to add help menu which have to include some features such as search ability, tree structure in a java application but i dont know how can I do. I searched about the topic and I found a microsoft html help workshop. As I understand, need to create .chm file with compiling .html files. After compilation, microsoft html help viewer is need to be run from java program with compiled html files when user click the help button. Is there a any different solution or does java has a library about help authoring. In short, I created a template in my head, but I do not know that I have enough information. I would also appreciate it if you could post any documentation that might be useful on this subject.
HTMLHelp (HH) also known as Compiled Help Modules (.chm) is about 20 years old but available and running on Windows 10. HTMLHelp is in "maintenance mode" for several years now.
You can spend a lot of money on "bells and whistles" tools that simplify and streamline the process of creating help files. Before you do so, it is worth trying out a few freeware tools.
Some thoughts:
CHM's are good for application help on Windows.
Please note - more and more content is web-based.
Help authoring has a learn curve and good help topics are time consuming.
Think about single-sourcing - one source of topics and different target formats (e.g. CHM, web-based (uncompressed help) on a server).
You should gain some experience with a workflow like e.g. Markdown -> Pandoc -> HTML files.
By the way, HTML Help Workshop (HHW) is the tool for compiling CHM's. For beginners the GUI of HHW is somewhat difficult. Use a time saver tool like FAR HTML (Freeware).
Please have a look at an old thread Code Project for some code snippets like:
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("hh.exe myhelpfile.chm");
Have a look at some samples for web-based (uncompressed) help:
Example 1: Uncompressed help - a bit dated
Example 2: FAR Web help created using FAR HTML.
I am trying to make a GWT based web application which will be able to show 3D model from PTC Creo's .stp (STEP file). I am programming in Eclipse.
I started with Parallax3D framework, and I am able to make simple objects. But I'm stuck with how to parse the .stp file and make objects from that.
Later I saw that there is plenty of other tools for 3D on Web. There are "gwt-g3d", "gwtgl", "gwto3d",....
I also found JSDAI API, which should be able to parse .stp files. With very limited examples I couldn't manage to do anything usefull.
I am lost with all those things. Which path should I take?
Has anyone done that before OR is there a simpler opensource solution for that?
Thank you.
You could use the NIST STEP File Analyzer (free but not open source) to convert the STEP file to VRML/X3D. Three.js based frameworks can then view the VRML/X3D. If you want a completely open source solution, you need something to transform the STEP file, which often contains NURBS trimming that three.js lacks, to a tesselated form. FreeCAD, pythonOCC, node-occ or the underlying OpenCasCade can transform STEP to a mesh form.
I am currently beginning the development of a (UI?) backup from a Webplatform. It is not our platform and I don't have access to the source.
I just have the HTML-rendered view of the Form-Data of the elements I entered.
So the task is to browse to the HTML, store the data (XML/JSON) and then login to the site to fill out the forms again to resubmit the data...
At the moment I'm prototyping with C++ QtWebEngine.
What' the best way to do such a task? What are good frameworks for "browsing" the web and analysing HTML?
Solutions in c++/java/javascript (or a firefox-addon?) are preferred.
Thanks for your help!
same as DSL language interpreter use "Document Object Model (DOM)"
my advice : C# webform app and webbrowser control:
webbrowser.navigate([url])
WebBrowser.DocumentCompleted Event
WebBrowser.Document (read document and help about "System.Windows.Forms.HtmlDocument" )
maybe need inject some java script in
/*
please don't use this info for hack and attack
*/
You could definitely do something like this using Firefox's Addon SDK. In particular you should look into the PageWorker module that allows you to load and run JS code against web pages without showing the page - everything happens in the background.
Which language/tool do I use to provide an interface between the web browser and a Java application?
My task is create a web page and provide a feature which will enable results to be uploaded as XML files to dynamically update the page.
I have been instructed to use languages such as Java, Javascript(JQuery), Ruby, Grails, PHP etc.
So I have so far written some java classes that will process the XML files but I am running this application from the command line. I DO also understand how to display the XML on the web browser using XSLT.
My problem is, that I have only ever written desktop applications... I don't know what tools to use to provide an interface between my java back-end and the web front-end or how to (for lack of another method) invoke the JVM from the browser.
How do I send uploaded XML files to my java classes and get the XML results back? Can anyone shed some light into which tools I should use and the network packages (if needed) I need to import in Java? (note: this only needs to be run locally)
Feel free to make edits to tags/title and question if necessary.
I have been working in java and i feel that servlet-jsp are the best option
to full fill your requirement.
We have a Java EE based web application and we want to integrate Pentaho reporting API into this application.
So, I'm trying to learn how Pentaho can automatically generate reports containing charts. I have downloaded Pentaho BI server and played with it for a few days. But I'm still clueless about the following issues:
How to generate reports dynamically at runtime without loading those *.prpt files.
Where I can get a simple tutorial about dynamic report generation
What the difference is between Community Dashboard Framework, charting tools and reporting tools.
The documentation on the Community Dashboard Framework site is not properly organized, and there is not a single tutorial about getting started.
If anyone can help me find the answers to some of my questions, it will be great!
You can define reports purely via the API of the reporting engine. Samrat is right on that the preferred way of defining reports is the report designer - as code changes are harder to maintain than changes of a GUI-editable external report definition.
I think the best way to go forward is to grab Will Gorman's book about "Pentaho Reporting 3.5 for Java Developers" which gives you a deep insight into the inner workings of the reporting engine and also how to define reports dynamically.
CDF vs Reporting: CDF is a javascript toolkit for creating interactive dashboards. Dashboards are aimed to provide a high-level overview over the state of your company with the ability to drill down or even customize them. Reports produced by the reporting engine are predefined/"canned" reports that we expect to be run frequently to answer specific business questions. Charts components are just components that produce a given chart for dashboards based on a set of input parameters.
CDF uses reports and charts as content in dashboards.
Without prpt files there is no pentaho reporting. To achieve dynamically, run the pentaho BI server and pass the parameters to the report. Load the report in iframe.