Hi all,

this seems like a commonly asked question, but so far I haven't found
an answer that works.

I wish to have a jar file which by containing a class which extends
JEditorPane and some html files, will display the html files which are
located inside the jar.

At the moment, I have a jar file with the following contents;

META-INF/
META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
help/
help/index.html
ui/
ui/Browser$HTMLBrowser$LinkListener.class
ui/Browser$HTMLBrowser.class
ui/Browser.class
ui/Browser.java

The Browser inner class HTMLBrowser extends JEditorPane to display html
(in this case help/index.html).

The code is below,

package ui;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URL;

import javax.swing.JEditorPane;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.event.HyperlinkEvent;
import javax.swing.event.HyperlinkListener;

public class Browser extends JFrame
{
    private HTMLBrowser browser;
    private static final long serialVersionUID= 1;

    public Browser()
    {
     setTitle("Help");
         browser= new HTMLBrowser();
         setContentPane(browser);
         setSize(800,600);
         setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
         setLocationRelativeTo(null);
         setVisible(true);
    }

    private class HTMLBrowser extends JEditorPane
    {
      private static final long serialVersionUID= 2;
      private static final String dir= "help";
      private static final String startPage= "index.html";

       public HTMLBrowser()
       {
           URL url;
           try
           {
               // Construct the URL
               // This is;
               // current dir + separator + help dir + separator + startPage
               String s= (new File(".")).getCanonicalPath();
               String separator= System.getProperty("file.separator");
               String t= s + separator + dir + separator + startPage;
                       // DEBUG
                       System.out.println(t);
               File f= new File(t);
               url= f.toURL();
               setPage(url);
           }
           catch (Exception e)
           {
           System.out.println( "Problem setting help homepage");
           }
          setEditable(false);
          addHyperlinkListener(new LinkListener(this));
      }

        private class LinkListener implements HyperlinkListener
        {
            private HTMLBrowser browser;

            public LinkListener(HTMLBrowser b)
            {
                browser= b;
            }

            public void hyperlinkUpdate(HyperlinkEvent he)
            {
                if (he.getEventType() == HyperlinkEvent.EventType.ACTIVATED)
                {
                    try
                                   {
                     URL newPage = he.getURL();
                                browser.setPage(newPage);

                                   }
                                   catch (IOException ioe)
                                   {
                       System.out.println( "Error opening new page");
                                   }
                   }
              }
        }

    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        new Browser();
    }

}

When I run this using "java Browser" (inside ui dir") it works (i.e.
displays the html page I want)
When I run the jar in the directory containing the "help" and "ui"
directories it works fine.
But when I run the jar anywhere else it does not work.  The html page
is not displayed.  Instead a blank JEditorPane is all that can be seen.

How can I get my class to look at the help/index.html file from within
the jar?

Thanks in advance,

John