Community
Participate
Working Groups
Ian, Wayne and I have been working on a series of pages that were calling the Pillars of Eclipse. The goal of these pages is to make it easier for newcomers and users of the site to find the information they need on the website by choosing the Pillar that fits what there trying to do. These Pillar pages will be an integral part of the work were trying to do in relation to bug 152513. Here are the 7 pillars : Enterprise Development Embedded and Device Development Rich Client Platform Rich Internet Applications Application Frameworks Service Oriented Architecture Application Lifecycle Applications On each of these pillar pages we have 3 main categories of information Relevant Eclipse Projects - This includes a table of Eclipse projects that contribute to the pillar Technical Resourcess - This includes articles, books, presentations, demos, etc relevant to the pillar Eclipse Plugins From EPIC - This table will display plugins from EPIC that are part of the pillar. Each page will also feature a getting started section, as well as news relevant to that pillar. Feedback and Comments are greatly desired!
What about a pillar where less is more? For the user who wants to explore Java and heard that Eclipse is a great tool (not platform in this case). A page where I can send beginners to. perhaps a link to http://www.eclipse.org/community/training.php or links to trainings for beginners. Articles for beginners and those who want to take first steps to explore eclipse. A link to http://planeteclipse.org/ Which newsgroups do we beginners want to read? Where do we want them to go to experience an eclipse community? Links to tutorials to build - a simple SWT app - a simple Swing app (nothing wrong woth that) - a simple RCP app ... and an excuse for the handling of the eclipse update mechanism :-)
For the CDT, we find there are three main pillars that represent our user base: - Embedded Development - Desktop Application Development - Scientific Computing You mention the first one. However, you are leaving out the two others. Despite the fact we are having success with RCP for desktop apps, there is still a large number of desktop apps, including video games, written in C++ or even C using the CDT. The scientific community writing applications for big iron is moving to Eclipse as well with the help of the Parallel Tools Project and Photran (Fortran) projects, along with the CDT. I think it would be hard to generalize the community to a small handfull of pillars without missing something. Eclipse is used everywhere in almost all areas of development (and not only software, too).
> For the user who wants to explore Java > and heard that Eclipse is a great tool (not platform in this case). Gerd, this is great insight, thanks. Also, no matter how often I read the names of the pillars, I feel they sound like they're written for Marketing types, not for developers. Although there are only two comments on the subject so far, notice how Comment 1 totally avoids the seven suggested pillars (while providing great insight as to what newcomers are looking for) while Comment 2 suggests a simpler terminology for the pillars that (I think) most developers can relate to: - Scientific Computing Immediate targetting of a specific audience - Desktop Application Development IMO this terminology is much less ambiguous than "Rich Client Platform", which seems to be an Eclipse-Specific Rich Acronym. Try this: http://www.google.ca/search?q=Desktop+Application+Development http://www.google.ca/search?q=Rich+Client+Platform
I agree theres a lot of different types of pillars that we could outline, and that its something that definetly needs to be hashed out a bit more. Anyone have any comments on the Content of the page and the layout?
Ive made some further changes to the pages and started work on the RCP page. Additions include Homepage / Docs icons Del.icio.us tag added to sidebar. removed arrows for dropdown information now clicking title of project / resource drops down the information.
I think this layout looks cool. I do think we need different icons to differenciate the mailing list subscription from the archive. Newsgroups also have archives, and there's no icon there. For better or worse, I'd probably drop the archive links altogether. I'd suggest bringing back the "arrow to explode/collapse" the project title, except changing the arrow for a "+" and "-" sign like that of the Windows Explorer. This way we can eliminate the Web Page column, cutting the clutter. To nit-pick, I think each section title needs to stand out more (Relevant Eclipse Projects etc) but I can live with it the way it is. D.
As mentioned in serveral comments I think the pillars idea is great but can be very cumbersome since it will never be able to cover all topics that make up the eclipse community. BUt for starters the mentioned 7 are a good starting point. I would considere giving an approach according to the target audience as in what do you want to develope. I think your definition of the pillars comes close to that also I would change some of the naming but this is just my opinion. In which regard is Application Frameworks different from Rich Client Platform? Another approach would be what is your level and where do you want to go from there. Something like: 1. Explorer - just looking around (this is probably not nessecary since these can simply look at the front page and go from there) 2. Newbie - Page with tutorials, downloads of sdk or callisto. Screencasts for showing how to download stuff, newsgroups, links to community pages, etc... 3. Developer looking for IDE - Downloads of sdk. Links to articles on using the jdt, cdt, links to the different languages and theier IDEs based on Eclipse, etc... 4. Developer creating plugins - Download of sdk, articles, tutorials, links to newsgroups... 5. Developer createing RCP apps - basically the same as plugins only with downloads also leading to RCP 6. User - links to the different projects (since there are so many maybe only the top level projects) along with an explaination what they are for, links to pages listing RCPs based on Eclipse, link to EPIC. This is basically a more detailed download page. The naming of the different audiences has to be revised but I think that if you go with this approach everyone will find eventually a category they fall into. The last category could be undecided and link to a page where there are demos (Screencasts) showing what can be accomplished with eclipse without a target audience in mind.
(In reply to comment #7) > I would considere giving an approach according to the target audience as in > what do you want to develope. I think your definition of the pillars comes > close to that also I would change some of the naming but this is just my > opinion. In which regard is Application Frameworks different from Rich Client > Platform? > I think something that needs to be cleared up here is that the projects such as RCP / CDT / EMF / WTP et al can be part of multiple pillars this is an N-N relationship.
Here are my pillar related comments from bug 158009 comment 14: IMHO the pillars fail if they are used to promote the Eclipse.org projects and that's what it looks like to me. For example, "Enterprise Development" looks like it is promoting webtools, "Embedded + Device Development" looks like it is there to promote DSDP and "Language IDE" looks like it is there to not forget about JDT and the rest. But all those three can be perfectly sumarized with ONE statement: "I use Eclipse as a development environment!" Isn't that the real pillar? In following this "out of the project scope" pattern I see the following "pillars": I Use Eclipse as * Development Environment (see above) * Administration & Management Tool (Application Lifecycle, Database Admins, BI Reporting, etc.) * Application & Tools Platform (RCP, RAP, GEF, EMF and all the other nice frameworks) And don't forget about the following pages, i.e. the pages where the pillars link to. IMHO it's not enough to make them a long list with much bold text and icons but without useful information, i.e. we should give a nice short description about the sections and about the listed projects. (In reply to comment #2) > The scientific community writing applications for big iron is > moving to Eclipse as well with the help of the Parallel Tools Project and > Photran (Fortran) projects, along with the CDT. I think their "pillar" is still Eclipse as a development environment, isn't it?
*** Bug 133726 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
From bug 159588 comment 7: The RCP category ( http://www.eclipse.org/home/categories/rcp.php ) badly needs: * reference to platform.rcp newsgroup * reference to platform newsgroup * maybe reference to platform.swt newsgroup ( since both of these newsgroups are under the Platform project, the .rcp one should probably also be present wherever the .platform group is -- like Enterprise developement ) * probably also "Platform" in "Relevant Eclipse Projects" (I don't see how this is more relevant to enterprise developement than RCP) * probably also link to "http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich_Client_Platform"
(In reply to comment #9) > * Application & Tools Platform (RCP, RAP, GEF, EMF and all the other nice > frameworks) Not sure that EMF/EMP stuff should be under there. I'd like to propose a new pillar for Modeling. See also these bugs for related issues with categorizing Modeling stuff: bug 160909, bug 160910.
I agree with Nick. Modeling is used in many or most of the other pillars and yet it's very difficult to find with the current categorization. Perhaps a less EMF-biased way to look at this is, if I wanted to use GEF for cool graphical views in my application, how would I know where to look? Not that we want to fill the page with categories, but if the categories we have only cover 1/2 of what's at Eclipse, then presenting only this 1/2 is a disservice for the rest of Eclipse. For example, which type of development is "Enterprise Development" trying to exclude? And where would I find the "Non-Enterprise Development" things?
Dare I suggest that one answer to the modeling problem is to include modeling projects in *all* of the relevant pillars? For instance, when I look at the original 7 proposed pillars, the only one that I would think EMF might not fit into is Embedded and Device Development. I think there are still big problems with the pillars, though, including overlap and ambiguity. Enterprise Development may very well target the desktop, the Web, or embedded devices, so there is obvious overlap with Desktop Applications (which I agree is a much better term for the uninitiated than RCP), Rich Internet Applications, and Embedded and Device Development. Could everything from these three be repeated within Enterprise Development? I fear we might quickly reach the point where *everything* at Eclipse can be described as relevant to Enterprise Development. Actually, as Ed pointed out, there isn't anything that's really alternative to Enterprise Development on the list. Somebody mentioned Scientific Computing. Development Tools would seem an obvious choice, what with all our extensible tool platforms. I could imagine other categories of software, such as Productivity, Educational...but we don't really offer anything special for those types of applications. Application Frameworks and Service Oriented Architecture stand out as particularly unfortunate categories, as both are more about approaches to development than actually categories of software that people are producing. As a result, if someone sees their category, they will completely ignore these two. As I suggested above, any frameworks or architectures that are appropriate to any pillar should go in that pillar. SOA could go in Enterprise Development, graphical frameworks could go in Desktop Applications, and modeling could go just about everywhere. Finally, there's Application Lifecycle Applications. I think this is where developers are going to feel that they're at a game of Buzzword Bingo and no one gave them their card. I think this is either a poor choice for refering to Software Development Tools, or a very specific reference to one technology project, either of which will confuse most people. (I just tried googling "Application Lifecycle Applications" and the *only* links that actually contained that phrase, without punctuation between "lifecycle" and "applications", were discussions of the the Pillars of Eclipse.) Maybe this is way too complicated an idea, but I wonder if the problem of overlap and subcategories could be better addressed with a series of questions... - What kind of application are you building? -> enterprise, software development tools, scientific, systems, other - How will your application be deployed? -> desktop, Web, embedded devices - What languages are you using? -> Java, C/C++, PHP - Which architectures, methodologies, and tools are you interested in? -> ... I could imagine the possible answers to subsequent questions (and even the questions themselves) could be filtered based on previous responses.
(In reply to comment #12) > (In reply to comment #9) > > * Application & Tools Platform (RCP, RAP, GEF, EMF and all the other nice > > frameworks) > > Not sure that EMF/EMP stuff should be under there. I'd like to propose a new > pillar for Modeling. See also these bugs for related issues with categorizing > Modeling stuff: bug 160909, bug 160910. > The idea of the categoies is not to duplicate the top-level projects. The Modeling top-level project already provides a view into what are the capabilities for Eclipse Modeling. The pillars or categories are intended to be orthogonal to the projects and present a perspective of what type of development they might be doing.
Do we have an ETA on the three remaining categories?
Do we have an ETA on the two remaining categories?
(In reply to comment #17) > Do we have an ETA on the two remaining categories? > We have decided to delay the other two pillars. It was not apparent what we could put on the Tool Builder pillar and the AJAX/RIA pillar we need a bit more time for the projects to mature.
In any case, we can probably close this bug as the Pillars have been successfully implemented? If there are any outstanding issues herein, I suggest opening separate bugs.
Agreed! Marking as fixed
Moving to Community/Website
