Bug 33628 [Preferences] provide API for showing a specified preference page
There is no way for a plugin to open the (workbench) preference dialog with a certain peference page selected. Enabling this would allow plugins to refer the user to a certain preference page, for example when a misconfiguration is detected during execution of an action. Also this enables developers to write a new search panel to find a text in the preference pages and get the user right there. A method select(IPreferencePage page), select(IPreferenceNode node) or select(String path) in org.eclipse.jface.preference.PreferenceDialog would help.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/preference/PreferenceDialog.java
implements
			IPreferencePageContainer {
	/**
	 * Layout for the page container.
	 *  
	 */
	private class PageLayout extends Layout {
		public Point computeSize(Composite composite, int wHint, int hHint,
				boolean force) {
			if (wHint != SWT.DEFAULT && hHint != SWT.DEFAULT)
				return new Point(wHint, hHint);
			int x = minimumPageSize.x;
			int y = minimumPageSize.y;
			Control[] children = composite.getChildren();
			for (int i = 0; i < children.length; i++) {
				Point size = children[i].computeSize(SWT.DEFAULT, SWT.DEFAULT,
						force);
				x = Math.max(x, size.x);
				y = Math.max(y, size.y);
			}
			if (wHint != SWT.DEFAULT)
				x = wHint;
			if (hHint != SWT.DEFAULT)
				y = hHint;