Bug ID: JDK-4749575 stddoclet: Add online search capability to J2SE docs

Type: Enhancement
Component: tools
Sub-Component: javadoc(tool)
Affected Version: 1.4.0

Priority: P4
Status: Resolved
Resolution: Duplicate
OS: other
CPU: generic

Submitted: 2002-09-18
Updated: 2014-05-05
Resolved: 2014-02-13

Add link in the J2SE API docs to Google or Inktomi search.
This is to make it easier for people to be able to search
the docs.

This could either be done by adding a link or
adding a search field to the document.  Either one should be labled
"Online Search" rather than just "Search", to make it evident the
search is not local.

Clicking the link or entering text into the field and hitting enter
would open a new window where the search results would appear, and the
user could click to display the HTML page.  It is currently
Sun's policy is to use Inktomi, so we are prototyping and improving 
the results.  All this requires is a change to the docs makefile.
We would not actually implement this unless and until the
search results were satisfying.

This is different from the outstanding request:
4269446 Add downloadable local search engine for the JDK documentation

This is a duplicate of 4269446.

13-02-2014

CONVERTED DATA BugTraq+ Release Management Values COMMIT TO FIX: dragon

14-06-2004

EVALUATION After much consideration and prototyping, my recommendation is to go with a "Search online" link rather than a search field in the J2SE API docs for 1.4.2. Adding the link does not require any changes to the Javadoc tool at this time -- it uses the existing -header option. Notice in the prototype (see the Comment field) that the link is in three places -- just below the title in the upper left frame, the header and footer. Clicking the link opens a new window the first time and thereafter re-uses that same new window. I would like to reserve the search field being in the document for either a local search, or for the time when the top search results are a program element's point of definition 100% of the time (when sufficiently specified in the request). There are also other bugs I'd like to fix for mantis, and picking the simplest solution now means I don't have to change the Javadoc tool -- we can just change the -header option to include the link. So I'll plan to do this unless there are strong feelings that the form should be in the document. The only oddity is that the link "Search Online" is italic by default in the header and footer because javadoc automatically encloses them in tags. I could use a Reinhold trick and turn it off with an end-tag, like this: -header "Java 2 Platform Search Online" Eventually, when we modify Javadoc to set the header with a CSS style rather than , we will be able to use this: Therefore, the make/docs/Makefile would be: -header $(JAVADOCHEADER) JAVADOCHEADER = 'JavaTM 2 Platform Std. Ed. v$(JDK_VERSION) <a href="http://java.sun.com/search/index.jsp?&key=version&value=4&doc=api" target="APIsearch" style="font-family: Helvetica, Ariel, sans-serif; font-size: 80%">Search Online</a>' The important part is to name a target, such as target="APIsearch" so it will open the same window every click. We need to decide whether the actual URL will go to the Google or Inktomi engine -- that is not yet decided, as Inktomi may have more flexiblity with categorizing the results than Google has. ###@###.### 2002-09-18 Need to re-submit to CCC for tiger ###@###.### 2002-12-05

18-09-2002