Community
Participate
Working Groups
Currently, launching preferences are distributed among the preference pages and launch config type tabs in the LCD: * The LCD contains perspective switching settings (i.e. which perspective to switch to for a config * mode) * The pref pages contain the following launch related settings: - Activate the workbench when a breakpoint is hit - Activate the debug view when a breakpoint is hit - Switch to associated perspective when an application suspends - the entire "Launching" pref page We should have all launching related preferences in one place. Moving the persepctive settings away from the LCD will reduce confusion for new users of the LCD, and free space for enhanced/improved configuration creation/instructions.
All launching preferences are currently grouped together on the "Launching" preference page. Propose to create a "Perspectives" preference page under Run/Debug. This page will contain the "Config Type to Perspective" associations currently defined on the LCD.
I played around with this yesterday, but I can't find a decent way to present it. If we move all of the information together, it becomes a three dimensional matrix (config type x launch mode x perspective). We can *kind of* present this with a table that has combo boxes for the cells (X x Y x Z). But it doesn't look right because we don't have the right kind of table. What you want is something like: mode1 mode2 mode3 ------------------------- typeA | persX persY persZ | ------------------------- typeB | persX persY persZ | ------------------------- typeC | persX persY persZ | ------------------------- But our tables don't look like that. We can provide column headers (mode1, mode2, etc), but we can't provide row headers. I've considered other arrangements of linked widgets, but the best thing I've come up with is basically a reproduction of the LCD; and just reproducing the LCD tree (list) in another location wouldn't be an improvement. The current setup would make more sense than that. The "problem" is that our current setup is pretty good. You select a config type in the LCD (where config types live) and can then adjust its settings. I haven't had any luck coming up with a preference page story that's *better* than this.
I've continued to think about this and the best UI I can come up with a is a duplication of the LCD in the preference pages. What you'd get is a list of the config types (like the LCD tree minus any children) and then the modes and combo boxes just like we have in the PerspectivesTab today. But I'm not even sure about the basic idea any more. What we have now is the Launch Configuration Dialog for managing launch configs. You select a config type and you can edit which perspectives it switches to. Why do we want to move this functionality away from the LCD in the first place? If we move the config type settings to the preference pages, wouldn't a natural extension of that be to move the entire LCD to the preference pages? There are too many preference pages to begin with. To make things easier for the user, we should try to move things *away* from the preference pages and out into the workbench whenever it makes sense. This seems like a move in the wrong direction.
Agreed. There is no clear win here, so nothing more planned for 3.1.
Re-open for 3.2. New users of Eclipse find the perspective settings confusing. For example, when a new workspace is created and the debug button is pressed, the LCD opens with no configs, and the first thing the user sees is the perspectives tab, which makes little sense to the user that has asked to launch something. Propose to move to a preference page, with layout similar to suggestion in comment#3 - i.e. a list of launch config types that drives the perspective combo boxes with the supported launch modes of the selected type. As well, the following preferences should be moved to this "Perspectives" preference page: * "Open the associated perspective when an application suspends" (from the main Run/Debug page) * "Open the associated perspecitve when launching" (from the Launching page) The page needs a clear description of what the settings control. The perspectives tab needs to be removed from the LCD. We may be able to put some more useful hints in this area (i.e. when a config is selected) on how to create a new configuration. This will help novice users.
*** Bug 76875 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 27588 [details] partial patch This partial patch (1/2) moves the perspective settings to a perspective entry in the preferences for the workbench under Run/Debug.
Created attachment 27589 [details] partial patch This is the other part of the patch (2/2). Both patches are required because they are for different sub-projects.
please verify Kevin
released patches and removed perspective tab constants from LaunchConfigurationsMessages.java
Darin, please verify
Verified. Modified some of the messages slightly, and added a "help" icon to the "getting started" tab on the dialog.
re-open to replace 'getting started' tab with a message area.
applied patch from bug 66576
Verified.
