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The S1S NCT extension of the source editor is inconsistent about what help topic is displayed when the user presses F1. If the user clicks in the white spaces (left and right panels) and presses F1, the user gets the wrong topic ("Finding Information About the IDE" from the core helpset). If the user clicks in the grey area, then the correct help appears ("Defining the Java API" from the NCT helpset). There needs to be a way to have the whole source editor linked to the correct help.
What is the NCT extension? What do you mean by the "grey area" in the editor?
By S1S NCT Extension I mean: In the Sun ONE Studio Enterprise Edition, there is a NCT module (Native Connector tool). In this module, when you open a connector descriptor file, the source editor opens. Just as the source editors are different for different types of nodes, this source editor is specific to connector descriptor files. I used the term "extended" in the manner that a class extends a base class. This is probably the wrong term, but then I am a technical writer and did not develop the module. By "grey area" I mean the part of the source editor that is grey. In the case of the connector descriptor file source editor, it is composed of two windows framed by a wide grey margin that contains buttons and such. The above is really noise in terms of the critical issue, being that the developers were not able to control the help mapping for every component in the extended source editor. If there is a way to correctly map every component in the connector descriptor file source editor, then this needs to be exposed. If not, then there should be. This problem not only affects NCT but anyone creating an add-on module that requires differentiated source editor. Please note that this is not the only situation where we are not able to get windows to map to the correct help. The problem is bigger than this one issue.
Thank you for the extra information. I've tested the IDE for appearance of the help when certain places are clicked in the editor frame window and if I click anywhere in the source editor frame I always get the "Source Editor" help topic. I've checked the help ids in the source and AFAIK the help id should be editing.editorwindow. I know a little about how to properly override/map the help ids to the right help topic so I'm transferring the issue to usersguide module. They should provide you with more appropriate help.
Chris, have you shown the NCT engineers this document? http://www.netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/JavaHelpAPI/index.html If things work in the source editor in NB, maybe there is a problem in the way the the NCT folks assigned the help IDs. If they determine from this doc that there is no way to get the IDs assigned in the way that they want because of the way that the core editor support is written, let me know and we can try to file a bug against the editor explaining the technical problem.
Created attachment 8712 [details] Problematic component
The problematic component (picture attached to the issue) extends org.openide.explorer.ExplorerPanel. If I understand the problem correctly, it's necessary to assign the helpIDs to the right and left panels too. Patrick, is it correct assumption?
I'm not sure where the help IDs need to be assigned in the window? Chris? Also, shouldn't this issue be reassigned to cpp? Or is it another module we're dealing with?
In response to the last comment, even though this module is not in NetBeans, it is an example of a pervasive problem for the writers. I will work on getting other examples from other writers.
I don't disagree that the problem is widespread. However, I think the issues need to be assigned to the module owned by somebody who can solve the particular problems. For this issue, no writer or engineer responsible for the usersguide module has any power to fix this issue, so I think that bug should be reassigned to the module where the problem will be fixed. If you want to track all of these kinds of problems, we could create an "umbrella" issue and assign it to usersguide. Then we can create new issues and fill in the Issue Blocks field with that issue number, so that we can have an overview of the instances of our problem but still make sure that the various people responsible for fixing the problems can be assigned the issues properly. I'll start by filing that umbrella issue and linking this issue to it.
Chris, since we already have an umbrella issue for these types of bugs, could we transfer this one back to the appropriate NCT module? I don't think there's anything more we can do on this side until we get more info.
No longer valid since apparently the NCT module does not exist anymore. 30484 still open as an umbrella for similar issues.
As this is covered under the umbrella bug, am marking as verified.