Using the Help Viewer

How to get Help

• Choose Help|Help Topics from the JBuilder main menu to open the Help Viewer.
• Click the Help button shown on a dialog box, or press F1.
• Highlight a menu item on a pulldown menu without activating the item and press F1.

Main parts of the Help Viewer

• The Available Books list, which shows the current book title and enables you to select another book.
• The Contents page, which displays an expandable Table of Contents for the current book.
• The Book Index page, which shows the index entries for the current book only.
• The Master Index page, which shows the index entries for all the books together.
• The Content pane, which displays the text of the selected topic.
• Navigation buttons: Home , Previous , and Next .
• Print , Copy , and Find buttons.

Navigating in the Help Viewer

To	Do this...
Change books	Click the down arrow in the Available Books list and select a book.
Go to a topic shown in the Table of Contents	Click the topic title.
Find (search for) text in the current page	Click the Find button . (Pressing Alt+F or F3 searches in the AppBrowser, not in the Help Viewer.)
Expand or collapse a section of the Table of Contents	Click the + or - beside a topic on the Contents page.
Expand or collapse all sections of the Table of Contents	Right-click in the Contents page and choose Expand All Topics or Collapse All Topics.
Follow a hypertext link underlined in the text	Click the link in the text.
Return to the previous topic in the history list	Click the Previous button .
Go to the next topic in the history list	Click the Next button .
Go to the first topic in the history list	Click the Home button .

Using the keyboard for scrolling

To apply the navigation keys to the Content pane, do any of the following,

• Click the Content pane, then click another window such as the JBuilder main window. Click the Content pane again.
• Press Alt+Tab twice.
• Click the Find button , then press the Escape key.

Searching for text in the current page

Copying text from the Help Viewer

Selecting a topic from the Table of Contents

• Select a book from the Available Books list. The Table of Contents for that book displays on the Contents page.
• Click on an item in the Table of Contents to go to that topic.
• Click a plus icon to expand a section of the Table of Contents.
• Click a minus icon to collapse a section of the Table of Contents.

Selecting a topic from the Index

1. Click the Book Index or Master Index tab at the bottom of the Help Viewer.
2. In the text field below the book list, start typing the words to find.
   As you start typing, the index scrolls, doing an incremental search on the index entries to find the closest match.
3. Double-click the index entry for the topic you want.
   If there is more than one topic for the selected index entry, the Topics Found dialog is displayed with the list of matching topics. Choose the topic you want and click Display.

To limit the word choice to a single book, select a book from the Available Books list and click the Book Index tab.

The Master Index currently includes the following books:

• Welcome to JBuilder
• BeansExpress
• User's Guide
• Component Writer's Guide
• Database Application Developer's Guide
• JBCL Reference Guide
• The Java Language Specification
• Additional thrid-party documentation

Check more than one index if you're doing a global search for a topic. For example, you could check:

• The Master Index.
• The Book Index for the JBCL Reference.
• The regular HTML indexes for the JBCL and JDK books.

See also:
Using the API Reference indexes

Viewing class reference documentation

To display javadoc files in the AppBrowser, do one of the following:

• Double-click a class name in the Structure pane to load that class into the AppBrowser. Click the Doc tab to view the documentation for that class.
• In the Editor, right-click a class name, such as Frame, and choose Browse Symbol At Cursor. The source for that class appears. Click the Doc tab to see the documentation for that class.
• Choose Search|Browse Symbol, and enter a class name. Click the Doc tab to see the documentation for that class.

To return to your source code, click the Project tab and click the Home icon in the upper left. To see the documentation again, click the Next icon.

To display API Reference files in the Help Viewer, do one of the following:

• In the Shortcuts page of the Help Viewer, click a Reference link.
• In the JBuilder main window, choose Help|Java Reference or Help|JBCL Reference.
• In the Available Books list of the Help Viewer, choose JBCL Reference or JDK Documentation.

Looking for a category of classes
Suppose you want to find the reference pages for "formatter" classes or "matrix" classes, but don't know what package they are in. To look for a category of classes,

1. In the Available Books list of the Help viewer, choose JBCL Reference or JDK Documentation.
2. Choose the Class Hierarchy link at the top of the Content pane.
3. Click the Find button in the upper left of the Help Viewer.
4. Enter the category of class you want to find and press Find Next.

Using the API Reference indexes

• The JBCL index shown in the Book or Master Index pages of the Help Viewer is preferred, because it has some general category entries from the high-level package files. This approach also provides incremental search.
• The JBCL index which is delivered as a regular HTML file is like the JDK index and contains auto-generated entries only. This index is available from within a web browser. It is accessed using the Index link in the upper-right of the JBCL high-level package pages.

The indexes which are delivered as regular HTML files are broken up per letter, for fast loading. Per-letter versions of HTML-based indexes are provided for the following online books:

• JBCL Reference
• JDK Documentation
• Java Language Specification
• JGL Documentation

In case you need to do a cross-alphabet search, a long plain-text version is also provided.

To look up a property in the index for the JBCL Reference book, see Looking up properties in the JBCL Reference.

The layout of the JBCL Reference pages

Each reference entry in the JBCL Reference shows not only the methods and fields (variables) that are defined within that class or interface, but also lists the ones inherited by that class or interface. You can easily see what methods and fields are available for that class or interface, not just those implemented within that class or interface. These lists of available methods and fields enable you to jump directly to the associated documentation.

The JBCL Reference page for a class or interface has the following sections:

• Inheritance tree, including subclasses
• About this class
• Lists of all methods and fields (variables) available for this class or interface
• Variables implemented in this class or interface
• Constructors implemented in this class or interface
• Properties implemented in this class or interface
• Methods implemented in this class or interface
• Events

Looking up properties in the JBCL Reference

To look up simple properties in a class file, use the short property name without the "get", "set" or "is" prefix. For example, look for the "image" property in the properties section of the ButtonControl component for the following getter/setter pair of signatures:

getImage()
setImage(java.awt.Image)

In many cases, methods exist that do not follow the rules for a simple property, but which also manipulate a property. Often, these additional methods supplement the functionality of corresponding simple properties. These are found in the Methods section in the class file, under the full method name where applicable. In the JBCL Reference Book Index, these methods are also included by their full names. The following example is a method from the ButtonControl component that falls in this category:

setImage(java.awt.Image, java.lang.String)

See also:
Component Writer's Guide: Types of properties

Using a web browser to view JBuilder documentation

For most web browsers, you first need to use a zip utility such as WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/) to unzip the documentation files you want to view.

Unzipped file size:

Borland folder - 13.4 MB

Java folder - 16 MB

JGL folder - 3.5 MB

KLGroup folder - 5 MB

For the Borland documentation set, unzip the file jbuilder\doc\borland.zip as follows.

1. Add \borland\ to the unzip directory path. The complete path will be:
   jbuilder\doc\borland\
2. Make sure that you're starting from a directory lower than the jbuilder\doc\ directory.
3. Unzip all files.

The process is similar for unzipping the java.zip and jgl.zip documentation files. For these, you need to add \java\ or \jgl\ to the path, rather than adding the \borland\ directory. This results in jbuilder\doc\java\ or jbuilder\doc\jgl\ as the starting point for unzipping.

A linked, ordered file list for the JBuilder documentation set is provided:

jbuilder\doc\borland\userguide\index.html

You can bookmark this page.

Adding entries to the Shortcuts page

For example, you could add the lines:

<P>
<A HREF="../UserGuide/kclassic.html#classic debugger">Borland Classic keymapping for debugging</A><BR>

• <A HREF="../ + the book's directory + /
• The file name
• # + the anchor name (without this element, it defaults to top-of-page) + ">
• The topic heading, or your custom description + </A >

If you have unzipped the documentation files, you can use a text search utility to quickly determine which HTML file contains the topic you are looking for.

When you leave the Shortcuts page and return to it again, the Shortcuts page is reloaded, showing your additional jump.

Most jumps to files on regular file servers are supported, such as the following example for a K: drive:

<P>
<A HREF="file:///K|/my documents/test/testfile.html#my topic">JBuilder Tips and Tricks</A><BR>

Items on the Help menu