As was described in the Orion 7.0 release announcement, the Orion Help system has finally gotten the re-write it has long needed. Beyond eliminating our last use of JSPs, the new Help now features:
- A more integrated look
- A new service point for plug-in contributions:
orion.help.pages
A plug-in can contribute a top-level entry to Help’s table of contents by providing a root property representing the root page ({Location: object, Name: string, Directory: boolean}) [example]. Orion Help then invokes functions on the registered service as its page content/sub-pages become needed. This service purposely resembles Orion’s file service (read, and optionally fetchChildren and readBlob), and returns either immediate results or promises [example].
- Consumption of markdown content
Everyone’s using markdown these days. This is what a plug-in’s read implementation needs to return. You can easily author it in Orion’s markdown editor.
- Generation of document hierarchy based on markdown headers
A full document tree can be defined in a single markdown stream, no separate sub-pages required.
Eclipse Help System we knew you well, and wish you all the best on the desktop.