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
}
	}
	/**
	 * Returns whether the current page is valid.
	 * 
	 * @return <code>false</code> if the current page is not valid, or or
	 *         <code>true</code> if the current page is valid or there is no
	 *         current page
	 */
	protected boolean isCurrentPageValid() {
		if (currentPage == null)
			return true;
		else
			return currentPage.isValid();
	}
	/**
	 * @param control
	 *            the <code>Control</code> to lay out.
	 * @since 3.0
	 */
	protected void layoutTreeAreaControl(Control control) {
		GridData gd = new GridData(GridData.FILL_VERTICAL);
		gd.widthHint = getLastTreeWidth();
		gd.verticalSpan = 1;
		control.setLayoutData(gd);
	}
	/**
	 * The preference dialog implementation of this <code>Dialog</code>
	 * framework method sends <code>performOk</code> to all pages of the
	 * preference dialog, then calls <code>handleSave</code> on this dialog to