RE: Suggestions for a server-side, JSP-based on-line help system

["Smith, Martin" <Martin -dot- Smith -at- mdx -dot- com>]

Hi,

Thanks everyone for your replies to this post. Perhaps some more information
will help clarify things a bit.

I have built web-based help systems in the past using pure HTML as well as
JavaScript. What I am faced with now, though, is the need to 
* authenticate users;
* make a library of different help sets available based on a user's profile;
* and scale the number of documents and the number of users served across
multiple, load-balanced servers.

Someone asked what web-based help systems require the JVM. One especially
nice web-based help system that requires the JVM is Oracle Help. I realize
that a JavaScript version is available, but it isn't nearly as nice as the
Java-based help viewer.

I guess I'm surprised after a couple of days of web surfing that web-based
help systems still require so many home cooked components: JavaScript code
for the TOC from here, an index from there, full-text search from somewhere
else. Things look better when cross platform and cross browser compatibility
isn't an issue. I think Microsoft's developer web site is really well done,
for example.

Ideally I would like a set of tools for organizing, publishing, and serving
up HTML topics by the thousands. Production and maintenance would be greatly
simplified if a large scale solution was available. Perhaps there's
something out there that I haven't stumbled across yet. I will check out the
links that others have already provided.

Many thanks,

Martin R. Smith

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