[oXygen-user] Help Search highlighting

[Sorin Ristache]

Hello,

We know about the wrong highlights and we were not able to find a fix 
until now. We think it is caused by bugs in the Swing view used by the 
JavaHelp system to display HTML content because <oXygen/> does not 
implement a custom search mechanism. It provides the search control of 
the JavaHelp system. The problem is worse if you run <oXygen/> with a 
Java 1.4 virtual machine: the highlights do not match the word correctly 
even at the beginning of the page on the right. That means the Swing 
view works better in later versions of the Sun's JVM (1.5.0_x) but some 
bugs still exist. We still try to find a solution.

Starting with version 7.2 the Help will be presented in a separate 
window, with usual platform-dependent decorations (on Windows, by 
default a window has minimize, maximize and close buttons) and a 
separate taskbar button. It will behave as a normal window, with the 
only restriction that closing the main frame of the application will 
close also the Help window. It is already implemented in the development 
stream but there is a problem with the focus when F1 is pressed in a 
type of dockable views, bringing the main frame on top of the help 
window at a very short time after F1 is pressed and the help window is 
displayed. We work on this too.


Best regards,
Sorin


Lars Huttar wrote:
> Hello,
> Seeing once again your responsiveness to bug reports prompted me to 
> report one that has been a minor irritation for quite a while. In the 
> Help window (User Manual), I click on the Search icon. Then I type a 
> word in the Find text field, e.g. "associate", and press Return.
> A list of chapters where matches are found is shown below the Find 
> field, and the content of one of them is shown on the right. In the 
> content pane, the searched-for keyword is highlighted. At first, this 
> highlighting works fine, but as we get lower down in the chapter, it 
> begins to deviate from the search terms. Near the middle of a long 
> chapter, the highlights are not even close to the word "associate", so 
> it's hard to find the search terms. (There's also no "next occurrence" 
> button.)
> 
> This is happening to me in Oxygen 7.1, but I remember this behavior 
> since at least v6. I'm using Windows XP; my coworker with Mac OSX sees 
> the same behavior.
> 
> While I'm on the topic, I'd like to put in a couple of other UI requests 
> for the Help window...
> - The usual title bar icons (minimize, maximize, restore) are missing.
> - The Help window is always on top, yet is not modal (you can still type 
> in the main Oxygen window). Seems to me always-on-top goes with being 
> modal. My preference would be that the Help window does not have to stay 
> on top.
> 
> Thanks,
> Lars