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Extending VE to support thinlets [message #92447]

Tue, 31 May 2005 09:05

Eclipse User

Hi all. I wondering to extend VE to support thinlet framework.

Is it possible? Are there any tutorial that can help me on this?

thanks.

Re: Extending VE to support thinlets [message #92638 is a reply to message #92447]

Tue, 31 May 2005 14:22

Eclipse User

Gilmar wrote:
> Hi all. I wondering to extend VE to support thinlet framework.
>
> Is it possible? Are there any tutorial that can help me on this?
>
> thanks.
It is possible, but depending of what you want to do, it may require significant effort.
i.e., if you want to use XML source, you will have to create a different editor that uses
the WTP's XML editor instead the JDT editor, and use a different IDiagramSourceDecoder, and IDiagramModelBuilder. These
are the guys that reverse parse the code and build the VE (EMF) model.

Unfortunately there is no tutorial for this type of effort at this point (Canoo have extended the VE for a totally
different widget set, but still generates .java code
http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/indextools.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E /vep-home/WebContent/docs/VEpapers/ulc.pdf).

If you want to learn more about the VE's EMF model, you can open the XML text window (which will show you an XMI dump of
the VE model as you edit your file). This window will only come up if you enable a tracing option; see the following
appends for more info

http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.tools.ve/msg01 169.html
http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.tools.ve/msg03 310.html

Re: Extending VE to support thinlets [message #92999 is a reply to message #92447]

Mon, 06 June 2005 05:44

Eclipse User

Hi Gilmar,

> Hi all. I wondering to extend VE to support thinlet framework.
> Is it possible? Are there any tutorial that can help me on this?

As Gili said we don't have a tutorial yet however we are very interested
in this kind of app being built with the VE. The only public example
that exists where the VE is used to persist XML and not .java is the
Application User Interface Markup Langage (AUIML) builder at
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/auiml. The VE has an internal EMF
model that all of the viewers and property sheet and editor works with
that handles everything to do with creating the beans and rendering them
and giving layout manager feedback and such. A code gen layer exists
that populates this model by parsing the Java source and maintaining a
linkage map, and also listening to updates to the EMF model and update
the source and vice-versa. For a non .java persistence you would need
to build a new editor part that didn't include the .java persistence and
had the correct entry points to populate the model from your particular
persistence and also serialize back.

We are working on a tutorial that shows how to do this. I think we will
pick XSWT and perhaps the JSR-75 JavaBeans XML as two examples.

Having done that however for thinlets what are the actual controls ?
The reason is related to how we get the image of each GUI widget that we
don't instantiate in the IDE itself but on a separate JVM and position
off-screen. Are thinlets Java AWT widgets or some kind of native JNI
calls to platform widgets from the JVM ?

Best regards,

Joe Winchester

Re: Extending VE to support thinlets [message #607863 is a reply to message #92447]

Tue, 31 May 2005 14:22

Eclipse User

Re: Extending VE to support thinlets [message #607888 is a reply to message #92447]

Mon, 06 June 2005 05:44

Eclipse User

Hi Gilmar,

> Hi all. I wondering to extend VE to support thinlet framework.
> Is it possible? Are there any tutorial that can help me on this?

As Gili said we don't have a tutorial yet however we are very interested
in this kind of app being built with the VE. The only public example
that exists where the VE is used to persist XML and not .java is the
Application User Interface Markup Langage (AUIML) builder at
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/auiml The VE has an internal EMF
model that all of the viewers and property sheet and editor works with
that handles everything to do with creating the beans and rendering them
and giving layout manager feedback and such. A code gen layer exists
that populates this model by parsing the Java source and maintaining a
linkage map, and also listening to updates to the EMF model and update
the source and vice-versa. For a non .java persistence you would need
to build a new editor part that didn't include the .java persistence and
had the correct entry points to populate the model from your particular
persistence and also serialize back.

We are working on a tutorial that shows how to do this. I think we will
pick XSWT and perhaps the JSR-75 JavaBeans XML as two examples.

Having done that however for thinlets what are the actual controls ?
The reason is related to how we get the image of each GUI widget that we
don't instantiate in the IDE itself but on a separate JVM and position
off-screen. Are thinlets Java AWT widgets or some kind of native JNI
calls to platform widgets from the JVM ?

Best regards,

Joe Winchester

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