Linking help pages into the index



High-level view of the process

  1. Create some new folders in the deploy directory.
  2. Create an index file.
  3. Add some strings to the resource bundle.

Details of the process


Create a new folder under Deploy

Under the deploy/classes folder, create a new folder named index. When you are finished, it will look like this:

Create the index file

Under the deploy/classes/index folder, create a file. Ensure that the file name ends in .idx. For BobCo, the filename is bobco.idx. These are the important keywords for a .idx file:

Keyword Description
index.nls_bundle The Index is enabled for translation so it needs strings for the index from the resource bundle. Ours is com.bobco.BobCoResourceBundle
index.keywords Enter a "!" character followed by the name of your extension
index.help.title This is a keyword for a string defined tin the resource bundle defined above.
index.1.1.label This is the label for an entry in the index. More than one entry can be defined in the file; the "1" is a counter. to define a second label, you would use index.2.label.
index.1.1.label This is a nested entry. It is indented and placed under the label defined with index.1.label. As before, the second "1" is a counter. You can define several entries this way. If you wanted to place a second entry under index.1.labe, you would use index.1.2.labell
index.1.1.link
or
index.1.link
This is the location of the help file. The actual link will be added to the index.x.label line that has the same numbers.
The path must be specified relative to the index HTML file that IBM Director will generate, so always add a "../../" to the front of your path. Ours is ../../bobco/interactive_help.html

When you are finished, the help index will look like this:

index.nls_bundle=com.bobco.BobCoResourceBundle
index.keywords=!BobCo
index.help.title=BobCoExtension
index.1.label=BobCoExtension
index.1.1.label=InteractiveTaskIndexTitle
index.1.1.link=../../bobco/interactive_help.html


Add the translated strings in the resource bundle

Edit the BobCoResourceBundle. Because we used the keyword "InteractiveTaskIndexTitle" in the .idx file, we must add a string for it to the resoruce bundle. Below is the line:

	{ "InteractiveTaskIndexTitle", "Interactive Task" }

Redeploy and test

Bring up your task frame, click F1 and then click the index icon. Scroll down to see the index entry: