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Eclipse has joined the list of programs that I regard as really useful and the best bit is that it is free! The real purpose of Eclipse is as an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for Java developers but don't let that put you off. The bits I use are simple and non techie and have made it so much easier to organise the various projects that I work on. Let's look at a scenario.
Your RH project is on a drive on your hard disk, the documents you were given from which to produce the help are on one network drive, the documents you produce from the help are on another network drive and you have some other related stuff on yet another network drive, the release notes perhaps. On each of those drives, there are many, many other non related folders. In all, a bit of a muddle. Now imagine that Windows Explorer allowed you to set up a view as if all those folders were on one drive that had nothing else. Imagine how much clearer it would be having a drive with folders like this:
Now let's take that a step further, you have multiple projects all having folders like the above. Sometimes you want to see all the things for one project, as above. Sometimes, you want to see all the Release Notes you work on. Imagine being able to view these things any way you decide. That is exactly what Eclipse can do for you.
Here's a picture of how I have set up various projects on Eclipse. The folders are scattered around a myriad of drives but here they appear as if they are the only folders on one drive.
Now look at a filtered view where I can see just the folders for one project, even though these are also on various drives.
When you click on any of the + signs you see all the files, just as in Windows Explorer.
You can open the files from here and there is a built-in text editor to use. There are also plug-ins, many of which are also free and I will cover some of those in the Using Eclipse section. You may want to skip to that section and read a bit more about using Eclipse before you finally decide on whether to give it a try. As I said at the beginning, I would not work without Eclipse.
Obviously you install and use Eclipse at your own risk and I cannot guarantee there will be no problems. That said, I have not found any problems with my PC or other applications arising since I installed Eclipse and neither have the developers I work with.
You can download Eclipse from www.eclipse.org. It's 85mb so you will need a good connection. For now just download the program, I will cover plug-ins later. You simply extract the download and the root folder will be "eclipse" which contains the program, there is no installation. At this stage you can happily move the folder to a different partition on your hard disk if you so wish.
Run eclipse.exe to open the program. Click here if you get an error message.
Eclipse requires the PC to have a Java run time program on the PC. If Eclipse does not find that you already have one, it will display the message below.
The first thing to do is search your PC to find if you have the file javaw.exe anywhere.
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Click the Workbench icon in the top right corner and this is the screen you will see. For now, ignore the Overview and Tutorial as they cover many features not relevant to our use.
Close the Outline tab as you will not need that. The Navigator tab will expand and that is the one where you do need some space. You are now ready to start using Eclipse.
Here I will cover the tabs that you have already seen and others you can access. plus some key features.
Overall, the view is known as a Perspective and the default perspective is Resource, as shown near the top right corner above. When you have got the screen laid out how you want, you can save that perspective.
This is where you set up your Projects and Working Sets. The terminology derives from how Java developers would use the program.
Organise these how you wish but for illustration I am going to cover what I did. Each project is a folder that I regularly access. The names within Eclipse do not have to be the same as the target folder although I suggest you keep them pretty close. I suggest you also include something in the project name to help with indicating the content, say rh as in rh_projectname for RoboHelp projects. Setting up the projects is very simple.
The next step is to organise these projects (folders) into Working Sets.
A project can be in more than one working set so you can have
It is this ability to cut it all sorts of ways that makes Eclipse so useful as you will soon find out. You will add new ways of cutting it as you use the program.
Expand the project containing the file and highlight it.
Then right click Open With to see these options.
The first time you open any file, the default option on the menu will be Default Editor! That is also what will be used if you just double click the file.
Eclipse will open Word documents within its own interface if you select Default Editor. If you prefer to open documents in Word proper, select System Editor. There is a known bug that may affect you if you choose Default Editor. If you get a message "Cannot create part", you will not be able to open documents within Eclipse. Simply go to Window | Preferences | Workbench | File Associations and add *.doc to the list of file types and set Word as the editor. Default Editor will then open documents in Word.
Double click the mpj or xpj file in a RoboHelp project and it will open in RoboHelp. Nothing different to what I have explained above, it's just an example of Eclipse saying to itself, I don't have any default editor defined and I don't have anything built in to edit these files, so I will use the System Editor, namely RoboHelp.
Once a specific file has been opened using one of the above options, Eclipse remembers the last used option and will apply that if you double click the file next time. Note that this applies to the file, not the file type.
Simply right click and select Add Task. The rest is fairly intuitive. Whether or not you use this feature will depend on your work style and other resources available to you.
If you do not use this feature, simply close it.
This is where any file that can be worked on within Eclipse will be displayed. If you use the area below (where Tasks appears by default), minimise that area to give yourself more working space.
I only use this for simple edits to text type files. For other file types, I use the System Editor or my defined Default Editor. For complex edits to text files, again I use the System Editor.
If you close any tab, to reopen it select Window | Show View and click the tab you want to open.
Once you have got a fairly clear idea of the tabs you use, then save that view as a perspective. Then opening that perspective will quickly restore your preferred tabs.
Select Run | External Tools | External Tools | New and enter the details of any programs you want to launch from Eclipse. This is a useful way of opening programs from Eclipse without opening a specific file.
As installed, Eclipse only knows about the files in a folder at the time the project was created. It's like RoboHelp which only shows files that are part of the RoboHelp project.
I recommend that you go to Window | Preferences | Workbench and tick the Refresh Workspace Automatically setting. This keeps the files and folders synchronised with Windows Explorer.
There's a range of plugins available by following links from the Eclipse site at www.eclipse.org. Many are free but some you have to buy. I haven't needed to buy any to get Eclipse to do what I want.
For those of you into Regular Expressions, there's a truly great little expression tester. Enter what you want found in one field and then start writing the expression. You'll see instantly how much of the string has been found.
The exact method of installing each plugin will vary so you will need to check the instructions on the site from which the plugin is downloaded. Broadly though you will unzip the download and it will create one or more folders. Simply drag those folders to within the plugin folder in Eclipse. The regular expression tester download created the com.brosinski folders that you can see below.
To make the regular expression tester part of the view, click Window | Show View | Other and you will see the RegEx Tester folder in the list. Expand it, highlight the item and click OK.
The Regular Expression Tester tab will now appear in Eclipse. See Perspectives to make this plugin one of your standard tabs.
You can set Eclipse to search in just one file by clicking Search | File.
For a much more powerful search, click on Search | Search to display the dialog box shown. This operates across all the files defined when you run the search. You can either set it to run across all the projects you have defined or just a specific Working Set. This much wider scope can be useful for search through all the files in, for example, a RoboHelp project. Remember it will search in the HTML code rather than just the topic text that the user sees. There is also a Replace function and Regular Expressions can be used.
This function is a real treat. You can add a bookmark to any place in any file that can be opened in the text editor, which of course includes HTML files. Having created the bookmark, you next need to display the bookmarks tab. Just go to Window | Show View | Bookmarks and the Bookmarks tab will open next to the Navigator tab (See the first screenshot). Personally I think the content means it is best next to the Tasks tab so just drag it down there.
Now here's the treat. Next time you want to edit that file, no need to open it first and then go through some menus to locate the bookmark. Just double click the bookmark in the list and the file opens at the correct place. Really cool!
Note that this only works with the built in text editor.
Eclipse has a very useful compare feature that operates with any file that is basically a text file, which of course includes html files.
Simply highlight the two files, right click and select Compare With | Each Other.
A new tab will open and both files will be highlighted. Put the cursor at the beginning of each and then click the down arrow. See the first change highlighted. Click it again and "This is the third line" in the second file will be highlighted. There are other icons to display changes but these are not shown in this simple example.
For files that can be edited in the text editor, Eclipse can keep track of changes and restore the file to an earlier state. I have not really looked into this in too much depth as for authoring, this will only be of use to anyone who does their editing in raw html. I have taken the view that there will not be too many people doing that. If you do edit the html raw and you decide to use this feature of Eclipse, please let me know how you get on </grin>. Note that the period of time Eclipse tracks changes is defined in Preferences so don't think it is forever.
Eclipse is a great organiser and launch pad. It doesn't do anything you cannot already do, it just makes it so much easier to find things and work on them. Why have your view obscured by everyone else's stuff that you never use, or indeed by your own stuff that is not relevant at any particular time.
I think everyone I have shown Eclipse to has given it a try and then carried on using it. Enough said?
To print this topic without splitting graphics for both A4 printing and American Letter size paper, set the top and bottom margins to .25in or 6mm.
Date |
Changes to this page |
| 21 Aug 2004 | Sections on Installing a plugin, using Search, using Bookmarks, Compare and Change Tracking completed. |
| 10 Aug 2004 | Tools graphic added. |
| 09 Aug 2004 | Refresh amended to cover the ability to automatically refresh the Navigator contents. |
| 08 Aug 2004 | New topic |
