JavaHelp^TM 1.0 Specification

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (SUN) hereby grants to you at no charge a nonexclusive, nontransferable, worldwide, limited license (without the right to sublicense) under SUN's intellectual property rights that are essential to practice the JavaHelp 1.0 Specification "Specification") to use the Specification for internal evaluation purposes only. Other than this limited license, you acquire no right, title or interest in or to the Specification and you shall have no right to use the Specification for productive or commercial use.

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JavaHelp 1.0 - Introduction

Status of this Specification

JavaHelp^TM is the Help system for the Java^TM Platform. These documents describe the JavaHelp 1.0 specification. As of the publication of this document, the closest released implementation is the JavaHelp 1.0 release which follows this specification.

We followed Sun's Open Development Process for the Java Platform, an open and inclusive process that produces high-quality specifications in "Internet-time". Through this process the critical feedback from all reviewers helped us transform early specifications into a high quality final specifications that satisfied the needs of the user community. The release of this specification is part of this process.

We expect the specification to continue to be extended in future updates. Please send us your feedback to guarantee that future specifications best suites your needs.

How to read this Specification

Two sets of documents are included. The first set is the actual specification that describes the JavaHelp API and its use. Also included are several related documents that, while not technically part of the specification, help in understanding it. These documents describe aspects of Sun's reference implementation.

We suggest that you begin by reading the specification Overview. In order to make the JavaHelp system features more concrete and easy to understand, a number of usage scenarios are explained in a companion document. These scenarios describe some of the different ways the JavaHelp system can be used in Java applications.

You may want to complement your reading of this specification by exploring the JavaHelp 1.0 release which corresponds to this specification. This reference implementation also supports some features that are useful for online documentation systems but that we have judged to not be appropriate for inclusion in the specification at this time. The release also includes examples of documentation and applications that use this specification.