Re: Anyone used the new JavaHelp???????

[Chris Hamilton <chamilton -at- GR -dot- COM>]

Susan Brown wrote:

>         I am explorig some options for the help delivery system in some new
> software, and was wondering if anyone out there has any experience with
> JavaHelp????????

JavaHelp will be a great way to deliver online help. It includes buil-in search
and indexing capabilities on the client side (which is to say, it won't replace
an intranet search engine) and it's a cross-platform solution, as are all
things Java. On the down side, you need to have the Java Developer's Kit to do
anything with it (downloadable free from www.javasoft.com), and if you're
looking for an immediate solution, you're probably barking up the wrong tree.
As of about three weeks ago, JavaHelp is in Early Release (that is, beta) form.
It will be released with Java 1.2, whenever that comes out. If you want to do
anything with it now, you have to use the JavaHelp API and do the programming
yourself. Back on the plus side, all of the major help companies (Blue Sky,
ForeFront, etc, etc) are planning on supporting JavaHelp with releases possibly
later this year or early next year.

Personally, I've seen Java. I think it's a cool language. The Swing technology
that JavaHelp uses for GUI is a vast improvement over the current java awt
class that handles all things GUI. I really want to use this product, but I
don't want to do the programming.

Chris