Malfunctioning help with jdic

Question

I am trying to get JavaHelp to work with JDIC. I have been able to get the Help to load correctly initially. When I click on the "Help" menu item, the JavaHelp browser loads fine and displays the help contents using IeEmbed.exe (I can see it on the Task Manager). However, if I click on the "Help" menu item a second time, the browser pane goes blank. It does this anytime I click on "Help" for the second time regardless of whether I closed the JavaHelp window in between or not. If I comment out the line
SwingHelpUtilities.setContentViewerUI("javax.help.plaf.basic.BasicNativeContentViewerUI");
then the JavaHelp window uses the standard Swing browser and works fine, and the browser pane contents never disappears. The disappearing browser pane behavior is similar to what occurs if I load the help initially and then go to task manager and kill the IeEmbed.exe. Doing this also causes the browser pane contents to go blank. Any ideas what is going on?
The following is the code I use:
   private void addHelpMenu() {
      JMenu help = new JMenu("Help");
      getJMenuBar().add(help);
      JMenuItem menu_help = new JMenuItem("Help");
      help.add(menu_help);
      ClassLoader cLoad = HelpTesterViewer.class.getClassLoader();
      HelpSet hs = null;
      try {
         URL hsURL = HelpSet.findHelpSet(cLoad, helpSetName);
         System.out.println("Help set=" + hsURL);
         hs = new HelpSet(cLoad, hsURL);
      } catch (Exception e) {
         String errorMessage = "Unable to load DavisHelp.hs:\n\n" +
               e.getMessage();
         JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, errorMessage,
                                       "Error",
                                       JOptionPane.ERROR_MESSAGE);
      if (hs != null) {
         SwingHelpUtilities.setContentViewerUI(
               "javax.help.plaf.basic.BasicNativeContentViewerUI");
         hb = hs.createHelpBroker();
         JRootPane rootPane = getRootPane();
         if (hb != null) {
            hb.enableHelpKey(rootPane, "top", hs);
            hb.enableHelpOnButton(menu_help, "top", hs);
         } else {
            JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(this,
                                          "Could not load the help files",
                                          "Error", JOptionPane.OK_OPTION,
                                          JOptionPane.ERROR_MESSAGE);
      // Enable window-level help on RootPane
      JRootPane rootPane = getRootPane();
      hb.enableHelpKey(rootPane, "top", hs);
   }

Answer 1

Hi,
I guess this issue is related to the fact that relative links in the *.jhm file doesn't work. For some reasons the first page is displayed correctly but all subsequent clicks to the TOC, Index or page internal links don't work.
Try to define *.jhm including the full URL for each page (e.g. starting with http:// or file://...)
There is another topic related to this issue in this forum called:
Using JDIC Native Browser with JavaHelp System
Regards,
Andreas