Oracle Help for Java Developer's Guide	Contents	Previous	Next

Deploying an OHJ Help System

The following sections describe how to deploy an OHJ help system with your product.

Supported Virtual Machines
Which OHJ JAR Files Must Be Shipped
Deploying Compressed Help Content in JARs

Supported Java Virtual Machines

Since OHJ is a Java application (or applet), it must run in a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). That means that you must ensure that your users have an appropriate JVM installed. If you are using OHJ as help for a Java application, that application must also run in a virtual machine, so it is likely that the JVM is already being distributed with your application. Oracle Help for Java requires Sun Microsystems JDK 1.3 and later.

Which OHJ JAR Files Must Be Shipped

The following JAR (Java ARchive) files must be redistributed as part of your product install. These files contain the OHJ engine implementation and its dependencies. For more information about these files, see Contents of an OHJDK Release.

help-version_num.jar
oracle_ice-version_num.jar

Deploying Compressed Help Content in JARs

Java based applications are often distributed in JAR format. You may wish to include your Help content as a JAR file in your distribution, as HTML content files are significantly reduced in size by JAR compression.

Creating JAR files

To create JAR files, use the JAR tool that is distributed with your Java Development Kit. If you are using a third party help authoring system that supports OHJ, it may also be able to perform this task.

Special care should be given to the organization of files and their assigned paths within the JAR archives. The directory structure within your help JAR file must match the directory structure for your product implementation JAR files. Your help content should be "below" the location of the implementation class that you use as a reference point.

For Example:

If your product implementation JAR includes classes with this directory structure...


/com/yourCompany/yourProduct/SomeProduct.class 
/com/yourCompany/yourProduct/SomeClass.class

...then your help JAR(s) should contain the matching paths so that the help content is below the product implementation classes in the shared directory structure:


/com/yourCompany/yourProduct/help/ProductHelp.hs 
/com/yourCompany/yourProduct/help/TableOfContents.xml 
/com/yourCompany/yourProduct/help/SomeHelpTopic.html

Which `Book` Constructor to Use

To create a Book object with help content loaded from a JAR file, the help JAR file and implementation JAR file(s) must be on the system CLASSPATH. If you have organized the JAR files as described above, then you know the location of the help content relative to the location of your implementation classes on the CLASSPATH.

Thus, you will use the versions of the HelpBook or HelpSet constructors that accept a Java class and a relative path from that class (see Adding the Help Data).