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Bug 200094

Summary: [plan] Model the IDE
Product: [Eclipse Project] Platform Reporter: DJ Houghton <dj.houghton>
Component: UIAssignee: Boris Bokowski <bokowski>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P4 CC: b.kolb, bpasero, bradleyjames, burner, caniszczyk, d.nachev, daniel_megert, eclipse, Konstantin.Scheglov, lesojones, martin.gutschelhofer, Mike_Wilson, mlists, tonny.madsen, ursreupke, wmitsuda
Version: 3.3Keywords: plan
Target Milestone: 3.4   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:

Description DJ Houghton CLA 2007-08-15 15:20:32 EDT 
The functionality of the Eclipse Workbench and IDE have grown significantly since they were created. In some cases, older capabilities have been superceded by newer ones or have been proven to be unwieldy or otherwise unsatisfying. We will create a new model of the underlying structure of the Eclipse UI, to be used as the basis for our future work. [Platform UI]
Comment 1 Eric Moffatt CLA 2008-05-14 16:27:13 EDT 
We've done a fair bit of work here but it's been mostly in the context of 'e4'...

We've developed a prototype of a new modeled UI that demonstrates how separating the UI capabilities (i.e. what it -can- do) from the policy(s) that will dictate how it appears as a Workbench clears up a lot of the existing complexity by un-coupling them (the current code is a mix with UI management and policy-related code existing in the same classes/methods).

As a result of some analysis of the existing Commands infrastructure we've (mostly Paul/Boris) done a lot of work on designing a new Services architecture that more correctly reflects the need of the workbench to be able to provide different services (or different contexts for the same service) to client code, based on where in the UI (i.e. Global, from a View/Editor, in a Dialog...) the service is being requested from.

There's also a realization that the Workbench already contains a number of model-like concepts, each with their own API (Preferences, IMemento and IConfigurationElement have been identified but there may be others). This, along with recognition that at least some of our RCP api methods are equivalent to preferences, has given us a possible path to simplification by presenting/manipulating all this information using a single metaphor/API, the model.

Aside from that we're also asking future-looking questions such as whether our current Perspective paradigm is actually as useful as it might be or if we'd better serve our clients if it were more 'work flow' oriented, including the age-old question of filtering the set of visible editors makes sense.
Comment 2 Mike Wilson CLA 2008-06-09 15:46:05 EDT 
Marking as LATER to align with move to Deferred items list in the plan. As Eric says, significant work was done in this area, but not enough to mark it as FIXED.

(Yes, I know LATER is deprecated; it is also the only category that actually aligns with the concept of deferring something.)
Comment 3 John Arthorne CLA 2008-10-29 16:30:19 EDT 
Marking as duplicate of the new Galileo plan item on this subject.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 252650 ***