Infocenter customization
All of the customizations which can apply to the Eclipse help system can also be applied to an Eclipse infocenter including
product specific branding, style sheets, banner and ordering of books. The easiest way to do this is to
create a plug-in which implements
the org.eclipse.core.runtime.products extension point and place all the customization in that plugin.
The Help system itself is divided up into a number of separate
plug-ins.
These tables shows available preferences, and which plug-in
defines them.
Creating a product plug-in
A product plugin can be created using the menu item File/New/Project and selecting Plug-in Project.
Uncheck the check box titled "Create Java Project", give the project a name, hit "next" and "finish" to
exit the wizard. In the extensions tab of the plug-in manifest editor add the extension
"org.eclipse.core.runtime.products" and give it a name. Create a product element beneath that and give it a name.
Beneath the product element add a property element and
set "preferenceCustomization" to "plugin_customization.ini". plugin.xml will now contain entries similar to
the following.
<extension
id="custom"
point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.products">
<product
application="org.eclipse.ui.ide.workbench"
description="This is my custom product"
name="Custom Product">
<property
name="preferenceCustomization"
value="plugin_customization.ini">
</property>
</product>
</extension>
Installing the product plug-in
Export the product plug-in as a deployable plug-in. Copy the jar file for the exported plug-in
to the "dropins" folder in the eclipse installation which will be used to start the infocenter.
Start the infocenter with an additional argument to specify the product. For example if the
product plugin is called help.product and it's product id is "custom" add the argument
"-product help.product.custom". Open the infocenter, the title will now show the customized product name.
Additional customization
Modify plugin_customization.ini in the product plugin to add more customizations, see
Help system customization, re-export and replace the plug-in in the dropins folder. To modify the banner
a line like this could be added to plugin_custiomization.ini.
org.eclipse.help.base/banner=/org.eclipse.help.webapp/advanced/banner.html
