RE: [nebula-dev] Move Zest to a new home

["Peter Centgraf" <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ian,

Thanks for allowing the community to comment on this decision.

As a UI designer (and Nebula user), my primary concern would be to keep the
dependencies of Zest as light as possible, no matter what project officially
hosts the components.  Currently, GEF requires a full RCP environment with
its associated complexity, while Draw2D/JFace/SWT can be used with only a
few jar dependencies.  This makes adoption much easier for small, focused
projects and for limited use embedded in Swing applications.  To put this
another way, I think it would be best to keep Zest separate from the full
GEF distribution, so that Zest does not inherit the full dependency burden
of GEF.

Otherwise, I can see the logic in placing Zest as a part of the GEF project.
There is a strong conceptual distinction between native or native-like
controls vs. controls that operate on a large custom canvas.  It seems more
likely that a designer looking for Zest functionality would start with GEF
and Draw2D than JFace and Nebula.  Although the API may resemble JFace, the
functionality and core purpose resembles GEF.

No matter what you decide, thanks for contributing!  Working in the Eclipse
community is exciting because of the new creative options that these
projects make possible.

--
Peter