Bug 244284 [Preferences] Preference page help is not shown when tree is selected
In the Preferences dialog, some pages don't have a help context associated with them. On these pages, the behavior of the help button/F1 key is inconsistent: the help tray is shown if a widget on the respective page is shown, but _not_ if the tree item is selected. Steps to reproduce the problem: 1. Open the Preferences dialog 2. Select the tree item "Tasks" 3. Press F1 (or press the help button in the lower left corner) -> no help is shown 4. Select any widget on the Tasks page 5. Press F1 -> the help tray is shown Root cause analysis: As far as I could find out, the reason for this inconsistent behavior lies in the method org.eclipse.jface.preference.PreferencePage.performHelp(), which is triggered in step 3. This method assumes, that the preference page's top level control has a help listener attached to it. This is true for many other preference pages [see for example org.eclipse.jdt.internal.ui.preferences.JavaBasePreferencePage.createControl(Composite)], but not for the Task preference page [sorry, couldn't find its source code]. So why does step 5 still show the help tray? That step triggers org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.TrayDialog.helpPressed() which searches the widget hierarchy for a help listener, and will always find one on the dialog level. I suggest to chage PreferencePage.performHelp() so that it behaves like TrayDialog.helpPressed(), for example by copying the recursive search for help handlers.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/preference/PreferenceDialog.java
/**
	 * Selects the saved item in the tree of preference pages. If it cannot do
	 * this it saves the first one.
	 */
	protected void selectSavedItem() {
		IPreferenceNode node = findNodeMatching(getSelectedNodePreference());
		if (node == null) {
			IPreferenceNode[] nodes = preferenceManager.getRootSubNodes();
			ViewerComparator comparator = getTreeViewer().getComparator();
			if (comparator != null)	{
				comparator.sort(null, nodes);
			}
			ViewerFilter[] filters = getTreeViewer().getFilters();
			for (int i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) {
				IPreferenceNode selectedNode = nodes[i];
				
				for (int j = 0; j < filters.length; j++) {
					if (!filters[j].select(this.treeViewer, preferenceManager
							.getRoot(), selectedNode)) {
						selectedNode = null;
						break;
					}
				}
				
				if (selectedNode != null) {
					node = selectedNode;
					break;
				}
			}
		}