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DITA-to-JavaHelp Help - Inserting Context Sensitive Help Targets in your DITA Files
Online help is generally deployed to provide help in context in which the user needs it.
All online help systems require the software to send a text string to the online help system, usually after clicking on a "Help" button, in order to display the help page required by the user. These text strings sent by the software are called "context calls" because the software "calls" upon the help system to display a page appropriate for the user's "context".
As of the date this page was written (September 2012), there is no standard way of embedding "context calls" in your DITA files. So Samalander has adopted it's own standard.
Embedding JavaHelp Context Calls in DITA for Samalander Processing
If DITA files are going to be used to generate JavaHelp with Samalander software, context calls should be embedded in "props" attributes in the DITA file, like this:
<topic id = "pgfId-1309620" props = "cshelp=security.userattrs"> <title>Create a New User Account </title>
In this case, if the application sends the text string "security.useattrs" to JavaHelp (see JavaHelpTM 2.0 System User's Guide for full details), the topic "Create a New User Account" would be displayed in JavaHelp.
DITA to JavaHelp will take care of generating the correct files to make the context call work. There still remains the task on the programming side of making JavaHelp "hear" the context call.