Home • Help Index • Using Help • Search • Contact

TETware GUI Help Pages

Return to TETware GUI Help Index

Please note: The ability to create your own help pages is NOT a supported function within TETware, it is provided for the Users benefit. The Open Group cannot accept responsibility for any adverse effects it may have on the TETware installation. No problem reports will be accepted against the TETware that relate to the production of Personal help pages.

Creating your own Help Pages

There may be times when it is desirable to have supplementary information relating to the management of Test Runs recorded somewhere that the User may wish to refer to.

It is possible to do so with the Help Tree! Both plain text and HTML3.2 can be displayed by the Help window.

It is recommended that if you wish to create your own HTML based Help Pages then you use the markup features used in the TETware pre-written help pages.

The Help pages are created as follows:

• At start-up TETware reads in the helpstructure.file file that should be present in the TET_ROOT/gui/help directory. The TET_ROOT directory is the directory that TETware  was installed to, it will look for the helpstructure.file in the "help" directory located off the TET_ROOT directory.

• The helpstructure.file is parsed and the help tree built based upon the syntax in the file.

The syntax is outlined below:

Each valid line in the helpstructure.file is composed of 3 parts. Any less than 3 parts and the line will be ignored. The parts are:

Identifier

The Identifier indicates to the help parser what the type of this line is, the types are described below, the Identifier should be first thing that is present on the line:

Name

This is the name that you would like to be displayed in the Help Tree, it is basically the node name of the item. The name is also displayed in the Window title if you click on the node and there is a page associated with it.

Page

This is the page that you wish to associated with the Tree node, the path to the page should be relative to theTET_ROOT/gui/help directory, the path should be a full path specification, i.e if the page is held in /TETware/gui/help/MyHelp/my_help_page.html, then the page specification should be /MyHelp/my_help_page.html. The leading / is important. If you do not want a page to be associated with a given node then use the text "null" instead of a page specification. For folders this will mean that no info indicator is overlayed on the folder icon. For info nodes it doesn't make sense to use "null" but it is possible, in that case when the icon is clicked no page is displayed.

The Identifier and Name MUST be separated by a "=", if they are not then the line is considered invalid and ignored.

The Name and Page specification should be separated by a "|", again, if they are not then the line is considered invalid and ignored. No blank space should be placed between the "|" and the start of the Page specification as it will be considered part of the specification and switching to that page will not be possible.

The page given for ROOT (if present) is then displayed as the start page.

To create your own help pages follow the steps indicated below:

Create your help pages

You should create your help pages and place them in a sub directory from the TET_ROOT/gui/help directory. You can create any depth of directory structure you need. The help pages can be plain text or in a HTML3.2 format.  Note: Currently Java 2 only supports HTML3.2, frames are NOT supported.

Create a back-up copy of helpstructure.file

Create a back-up copy of helpstructure.file to ensure that you are able to undo any changes.

Modify helpstructure.file

Modify helpstructure.file to include your help pages/folders etc...

Reload TETware

Once you reload TETware your help pages should now be visible.

Important notes

The following are a list of important notes that should be read and followed whenever you create your own Help Pages:

Beware of images

Image path specification can be a problem with the Java HTML editor. To specify the location of images to be displayed in the Help Page you should use the following format:

<IMG SRC="file:help/[yourpath]/yourimage.jpg">

The syntax here is very important, the IMG SRC directive MUST start with "file:help", no leading / should be placed before "help". GIF images (.gif) are also supported by the Editor.

Beware of image names

Image names can also be a problem, it has been observed that image names that are all capitals are NOT loaded into the page correctly (this problem has only been observed on Win32 systems). Where possible it is best to use all lower case names for images.

Rendering the <CENTER> tag

It has been observed that help page written in HTML that contain the <CENTER> tag will not be rendered correctly. No reasonable explanation has been found for this, however a work-around using a <BR> tag is effective. Just use:

<CENTER>
desired HTML
<BR>
</CENTER>

(This problem is seen when a node in the help tree is clicked but no associated page is displayed and the nodes colour is not changed.)

Examples

Here are a few examples for creating your own pages:

Creating a new folder with no associated page with sub-pages

In general for completely new folders it is best to create a whole new top level folder, so use:

   H1=My folder|null

Here a new folder is created with no associated page.

For sub pages it is best to create whole new directory under the TET_ROOT/gui/help directory, so create:

   TET_ROOT/gui/help/My_folder/

To add sub pages use:

    SUB=My sub page|/My_folder/my_sub_page.html 
    SUB=My other sub page|/My_folder/my_other_sub_page.txt

If your .html files contain images then create a /images directory from the My_folder directory and place images in there. When referring to the images in the .html file use:

    <IMG SRC="file:help/My_folder/images/my_image.jpg">

Creating sub folders

If you wish to create a sub folder from an existing one then you should create a new directory in the file system that branches from the folder you wish to branch from.

So if folder TET_ROOT/gui/help/Getting_started/ already exists and you wish to create a new folder under it then create a directory to hold the files:

   TET_ROOT/gui/help/Getting_started/My_sub_folder/

Then place your help pages in the My_sub_folder directory.

Modify helpstructure.file to add your sub folder, for sub folders you should add one to the number of the heading you wish to branch from, i.e.

If the following already exists in helpstructure.file,

   H1=Getting Started|null

then you add something like:

   H2=My starting page|/Getting_started/My_sub_folder/my_starting_page.html

©

Return to TETware GUI Help Index