Having documentation fully integrated makes it easier and quicker to search for help topics than accessing the information remotely. If you have local documentation that is in one or more plug-ins, you can integrate it fully with the CICS Explorer™ Help Contents. You can also integrate documentation from another source, for example you can include one or more of the CICS®, or any other, Information Center plug-ins.
The CICS Explorer is built on the Eclipse open source platform which provides an extensible integrated development environment. Using the Eclipse platform, anyone can build tools that integrate seamlessly with the environment and other tools. The key to the seamless integration of tools with Eclipse is the plug-in. With the exception of a small runtime kernel, everything in Eclipse is a plug-in. This means that a plug-in you develop integrates with Eclipse, and so with the CICS Explorer, in exactly the same way as other plug-ins.
When you create a documentation plug-in, it is fully integrated with the CICS Explorer, and the contents are displayed in the Help Contents.
You can create your own documentation plug-in using the Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) which is available in the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The Eclipse IDE is open source and can be downloaded from the Eclipse Web site http://www.eclipse.org. The documentation explains how to get started, and a cheat sheet provides step-by-step instructions for creating a plug-in.