MATLAB: force doc command to open a specified reference HTML page - matlab

Question

Say I've written a class in a package, called mypackage.myclass. I've written my own HTML documentation for the package and the class, and have included this within the MATLAB help browser as described in the MATLAB documentation.
I can display this HTML documentation by using the help browser to navigate directly to it, but typing doc mypackage.myclass does not display it; instead it displays some HTML documentation that is auto-generated by helpwin (which is a nice feature, but not what I want - the auto-generated documentation is too techy for my users).
How can I force doc to display my documentation, rather than the auto-generated documentation?
Equivalently:
When you run doc docTopic, inside the doc command the Java class com.mathworks.mlservices.MLHelpServices.showReferencePage(docTopic) gets called. If a reference page for docTopic exists, it displays it and returns a success value. If a reference page doesn't exist, it returns a failure value, which then causes helpwin(docTopic) to get called. Somewhere there must be some catalog that connects values of docTopic with individual reference HTML files. How can I fiddle with that catalog - or can I create one for my package?
MathWorkers and #Yair, please give me enough undocumented rope to hang myself with :)

Answer 1

As far as I know this is not possible and not intended by MathWorks. I don't know of an undocumented way of doing this either. As far as I remember the keywords for doc are hard-coded somewhere.
Depending on your setup you can try the following: Prepare your own doc command that uses web(..., '-helpbrowser') to display HTML pages in MATLAB's help browser:
function doc(topic)
my_topics = {
'foo', 'foo.html'
'bar', 'bar/help/intro.html'
};
for i = 1 : size(my_topics, 1)
if strcmpi(topic, my_topics{i, 1})
web(my_topics{i, 2}, '-helpbrowser');
return;
end
end
% Fall back to MATLAB's doc. Note that our doc shadows MATLAB's doc.
docs = which('doc', '-all');
old_dir = cd();
c = onCleanup(#() cd(old_dir));
cd(fileparts(docs{2}));
doc(topic);
end
If you put that function in a file doc.m and put the corresponding directory at the beginning of the MATLAB path (see help addpath) then it will be called instead of the built-in doc.
Of course you could use some other place to store your custom doc mapping (a file, for instance) or use some kind of dynamic lookup scheme.
UPDATE: As of MATLAB R2012b, the '-helpbrowser' option of web is undocumented. This is probably related to the GUI changes in that MATLAB version, which also include the help browser. web(..., '-helpbrowser') still works as intended, but that may change in future versions of MATLAB. As far as I know, there is no documented way of opening any HTML page in the help browser in R2012b.