Eclipse at VMware

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Eclipse at VMware

• Laura Bellamy
• November 2009

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Reasons for Moving to Eclipse

• Supports a plug-in environment that works for our
  product model
• Product components are delivered as plug-ins
• Third-party content integrates as plug-ins
• Refresh content at the component level
• Many engineering teams already use the Eclipse
  IDE to develop products
• Existing Eclipse support in the DITA OT
• Eclipse build targets
• Navref, anchoref, searchtitle, and navtitle
• Existing Framework vs. raw HTML
• The Information Center Framework has good
  functionality

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Reasons for Moving to Eclipse (cont.)

• Open source solution
• API makes it easy to extend
• Framework is highly customizable (icons, chrome,
  default behavior)
• Lucene search with option to add engines
• Integrated localized content
• Static URLs allow customers to bookmark specific
  topics across releases

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Cons of Eclipse

• Open source docs are out of date and have content
  gaps
• Hard to find Eclipse documentation and guidance
  outside of IBM
• Eclipse is huge. Tough to determine what you need
• Standalone requires Eclipse/Java
• A lot of customization is Javascript

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Eclipse Gotchas

• Agree on terminology with development teams
• Eclipse might be familiar to engineers, but they
  speak a different language than you do.
• Example "plug-in" and "framework".
• Understand the difference between information
  centers and standalone help
• Consider the IT resources required
• Componentized architecture can have big DITA
  impact
• Discuss business process and role changes for IC
  ownership