You might want to take a look at ClassLoader.getSystemResource(). It also may be worthwhile to put a copy of your documentation in runme.jar, to guarantee it will be accessible. In my instructions at least, the appication might be started from any directory, and we can't make any assumptions about the prexisting classpath. But we do know that the application is started with
java -jar runme.jar [mode]
So we know that runme.jar is in the classpath, even if nothing else is.