Re: [platform-ui-dev] FW: [Bug 32499] DialogFields framework should be s

[Nick_Edgar@xxxxxxxxxx]

Gunnar,

The overall gist of the steps you propose is fine.  
We need to understand:
- what are the overall deficiencies of the current SWT, JFace and Workbench APIs for easily creating dialogs?
- how do people currently work around these deficiencies?
- how can we do better?
- what does the DialogFields framework provide in this respect?

For preference pages, we have the FieldEditors abstraction in JFace, but these have some real limitations:
- They are tied to preference pages.
- They are awkward to use unless all fields in your preference page use FieldEditors, and your preference page subclasses FieldEditorPreferencePage.
- There is no clear separation between model and view (I mean "view" in the generic MVC sense, not a workbench view).
- They assume that your model is a preference store.
- They don't allow you to easily change the presentation between alternatives.  E.g. if I have a one-of-many choice, it should be easy to switch between using a radio group, a combobox, or a list.  I should not have to do low-level SWT twiddling to achieve this.

I'd like to see a framework that:
- allows you to easily construct dialogs, preference pages and property pages
- does not require low-level SWT twiddling
- but allows SWT twiddling where needed
- allows model-based fields
- allows you to easily change the presentation for a particular kind of field (e.g. the one-of-many example above)
- takes care of stylistic issues for you (e.g. dialog fonts)

This is an area I'd like to work on for 2.2.   Unfortunately, we will not be able to begin looking at this until we ship 2.1 at the end of March.
So if you want to start looking at this area, we'd appreciate your help.

Regards.
Nick

"Gunnar Wagenknecht" <G.Wagenknecht@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx 03/04/03 01:59 PM Please respond to platform-ui-dev

To:        <platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>         cc:                 Subject:        [platform-ui-dev] FW: [Bug 32499] DialogFields framework should be shared

Hi!

According to the following comment I'd like to contribute to this. But I
think it is not just an easy "refactoring". Are there any guidelines on
how to proceed? I think there might be enough experience in the Eclipse
board about the next steps.

- investigate current framework
- track current usage
- define and discuss stable API
- write a spec

Thanks, Gunnar

-----Original Message-----
From: bugzilla-daemon@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bugzilla-daemon@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 4:51 PM
To: Gunnar Wagenknecht
Subject: [Bug 32499] DialogFields framework should be shared


http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=32499

nick_edgar@xxxxxxxxxx changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
           Severity|normal                      |enhancement
             Status|NEW                         |ASSIGNED
           Priority|P3                          |P4



------- Additional Comments From nick_edgar@xxxxxxxxxx  2003-03-03 10:50
------- There are no plans for the UI team to work on this defect until
higher 
priority items are addressed. 
If you would like to work on this defect, please let us know on the
platform- ui-dev mailing list.




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