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Confused about GEF, GMF and Graphiti [message #1718353] Tue, 22 December 2015 14:49 Go to next message
Eclipse UserFriend
Can someone shed some light on the differences of the following projects : GEF, GMF and Graphiti.
Re: Confused about GEF, GMF and Graphiti [message #1718600 is a reply to message #1718353] Mon, 28 December 2015 03:17 Go to previous message
Eclipse UserFriend
Hubert,

since you asked this question on the Graphiti forum, the answer might be somewhat in favour of Graphiti... Wink

Anyhow, here is my view on the 3 franeworks:
- GEF: is the basic Graphics framework that is used for all graphical representations inside Eclipse (at least 3.x, for e4 there is also the option to use JavaFX). GEF offers great flexibility but is rather complex and it will be hard to use to write an editor unless you are familiar with the framework in depth. Using GEF means coding Java against a rather low-level API.
- GMF: uses GEF under the hood. GMF allows using an EMF model to define a graphical editor, the editor coding will be generated by GMF to Java coding. There are some means to adapt the generator of that coding, but in most cases in the end you will need to modify the generated source code which is hard for maintanance or ongoing development. Also you have a break between the high-level modeling of teh editor and the rather low-level Java code adaptations.
- Graphiti: uses GEF under the hood. Offers a higher level of Java API to create a diagram editor. The editor can start with basic functionality as there there are many defaults in place and can be arbitryrily refined by adding more features and/or changing default behaviors by custom functionality. Users can start with rather basic functionlality of the franeworks and later dig into the depths as they focus on certain aspects of the editor to refine them.

HTH,
Michael
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