### 11.3.6 Establishing an Oracle Help environment

To use Oracle Help for Java, you must have both Oracle Help and a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed on your system. Oracle Help version 5.0 requires Java SE version 5.0 or a later version. If you plan to create .jar files, you will also need jar.exe from the Java Developer’s Kit (JDK).

Oracle Help for Java is available for download from the Oracle Technology Network; see §11.2 Obtaining tools for a Java-based Help system.

Environment variables

Edit Windows System environment variable CLASSPATH (or create CLASSPATH if it is not already defined on your system):

Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables

What you add to CLASSPATH depends on which version of Oracle Help you are using; the dependencies and file names changed between versions 4 and 5.

If you are using Oracle Help version 4, append to CLASSPATH the following paths, separating each path from the next with a semicolon:

where\you\installed\ohj\

where\you\installed\ohj\help4.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\help4-demo.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\help4-indexer.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\ohj-jewt.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\oracle_ice.jar

For example (all on one line, of course):

CLASSPATH=D:\ohelp\help4-indexer.jar;D:\ohelp\help4-demo.jar;D:\ohelp\help4.jar;D:\ohelp\ohj-jewt.jar;D:\ohelp\;D:\ohelp\oracle_ice.jar;D:\ohelp\help4-indexer.jar

If you are using Oracle Help version 5, append to CLASSPATH the following paths, separating each path from the next with a semicolon:

where\you\installed\ohj\

where\you\installed\ohj\ohj.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\help-share.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\share.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\help-demo.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\help-indexer.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\jewt.jar

where\you\installed\ohj\oracle_ice.jar

For example (all on one line, of course):

CLASSPATH=g:\ohj5;g\ohj5\ohj.jar;g:\ohj5\help-share.jar;g:\ohj5\oracle_ice.jar;g:\ohj5\jewt.jar;g:\ohj5\share.jar;g:\ohj5\help-indexer.jar

Oracle Help viewer

Given these settings for CLASSPATH, if you have also established a path to java.exe in a current JRE (see §11.3.5 Establishing a JavaHelp environment), to view the results of generating Oracle Help you should be able to use a .bat file with commands like the following:

cd where\you\installed\ohj

java oracle.help.demo.ChoiceDemo "\path\to\MyOutput\help\MyDoc.hs"

In practice, for Oracle Help 5, we find that setting the CLASSPATH environment variable is not sufficient; you must still supply the same dependencies to the java command as an argument to -classpath. For example:

cd G:\OHJ5

REM The following java command must be all on one line:

java -classpath "ohj.jar;help-share.jar;oracle_ice.jar;jewt.jar;share.jar;help-demo.jar" oracle.help.demo.ChoiceDemo "G:\OmniSys\UG\ohj\help\ugmif2go.hs" %*

Your experience might be different.

| 11.3.5 Establishing a JavaHelp environment |  | 11.3.7 Creating a directory structure for JavaHelp / Oracle Help |