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[Zest] Background information [message #1747405]

Mon, 14 November 2016 10:48

Christoph Broeter

Messages: 30
Registered: July 2015

Member

Hey Guys.

I decided to work with Zest while dealing with my masters thesis in computer science. Due to that I want to give the reader a brief overview of Zest. This should be in the manner that foreigners to the java domain and the framework do understand it briefly.
Cause the official website does not contain a lot of information on the mindset behind the masterpiece id like to get some information from you guys.

I do that very strategic. Therefore I query you and ask you: "What would you guys see as important information for the reader coming to zest?". Please read further if you have taken some time thinking about the question.

Since I obviously have had my own thoughts on that topic, I decided that the bundling with GEF and is a point worth mentioning. Therefore I need some information on that. When did Zest get integrated in the bundle? Was the bundling intended since start of the zest implementation?

Next step would be mentioning offerings of the zest implementation. Canvas (Viewer), Layouts, Listeners, MVC (ContentPart).
Very important for me is the layouts-topic.
As far as i know makes Zest use of algorithms implemented in GEF and does not provide its own algorithms.
"Are those algorithms maintained?", "Which algorithms are used precisely? (Kamada-Kawai, Fruchterman-Reingold,...)"

Thanks for reading and if you are interested in supporting my thesis by sharing some information or correct my thoughts, you and your words are very welcome. Smile

[Updated on: Mon, 14 November 2016 10:50]

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Re: [Zest] Background information [message #1747543 is a reply to message #1747405]

Tue, 15 November 2016 19:39

Alexander Nyssen

Messages: 244
Registered: July 2009
Location: Lünen

Senior Member

Hallo Christoph,

concerning the history of Zest, the presentations given at https://github.com/eclipse/gef/wiki#further-reading might be a good starting point. Zest was initially contribute to Mylyn and has joined GEF in 2007. If you need to know details it would probably be best to contact Ian Bull, who was kind of the head behind the initial Zest.

With respect to the scope of Zest, it would be interesting to know whether you are referring to the current Zest code base or the original one. The layout algorithms that are now offered by GEF Layout were originally part of Zest. We have migrated them. Most of the other parts have been rewritten from scratch to make use of JavaFX (the original Zest was very much tight into SWT).

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