Embedding commands in help
It is possible to create links to workbench commands in help content. When
the user clicks the link, the command will be executed. This feature is similar
to
Active Help in that it uses JavaScript to bridge between the documentation
HTML and the Eclipse Java runtime. Also like Active Help, the command framework is extensible;
so you can contribute new commands with interesting behaviors.
However, unlike Active Help, there are a large number of useful commands already defined
in the workbench and more are being added all the time. This should be appealing to
documentation authors because linking to an existing command does not require
writing any Java code.
Command links can be used to:
-
Open a specific preference page, such as
General > Appearance
.
-
Select a new perspective
or switch to a pre-determined perspective like the
Java Browsing
.
perspective
-
Select a view to open
or open a pre-determined view like the
Bookmarks
.
view
-
Open wizards like the
New Plug-in Project
wizard and the
Export Preferences
.
wizard
-
Open a Cheat Sheet.
-
Open a
message dialog.
-
Open the
About Eclipse SDK
dialog.
-
And much more!
To get an idea of the range of commands available, look at the
General > Keys
preference page. This page is used to bind key sequences to commands
so it shows the list of available commands. Note that not every command will do something useful from
help content. Many commands are designed to work within a somewhat narrow context (like a particular view,
or expecting a certain type of selection).
If you want to define your own commands, refer to the documentation for the
org.eclipse.core.commands API package
and the
org.eclipse.ui.commands and
org.eclipse.ui.handlers extension-points.
