We have need for a navigator-type view in our RCP and we were looking at Common Navigator Framework when we discovered Remote Systems Explorer. I have a few questions:
Why was RSE not developed on top of CNF?
Why would someone use RSE over CNF?
Can the RSE code, e.g. local filesystem, be used in a CNF view?
I believe most of our users would be baffled by all the fine options and settings in RSE, i.e. they want a Windows Explorer experience but with files/objects stored remotely. Does this sound like a fit for RSE?
2. CNF is just a framework, RSE has more implementation / services.
Also, RSE is designed around lazy loading and caching (but the respective
frameworks are not ideal).
3. Wrapping RSE in a CNF view doesn't make sense IMO - RSE has so many direct UI
dependencies that I don't think this would work. It would make more sense to
take the RSE "services" layer only and wrap those for being used underneath
the Target Explorer.
4. There's lots of happy RSE users and I think it works reasonably well without
tuning any of the options - so unless you have any specific needs you'll likely
be happy with RSE.