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The Compare plugin has not undergone much work in the last few releases and is showing it. From an architectural standpoint, there are several Compare internals that need to be made API in order to properly support clients and there are also several polish items that have been identified by Eclipse development teams. In addition, new ISaveable support was added in 3.2 and we should investigate integrating this into Compare. From a usability standpoint, the compare editor uses a custom viewer for content which appears similar to the related editor but has a reduced capability which is often confusing for users. Smaller usability issues involve breaking out the outline from the editor into the Outline view. There is supported by compare but is not used by Team or other Platform clients. [Team]
This plan item is committed according to the Eclipse 3.3 Project Plan rev. Feb.23, but I do not see any activity... anything going on here? In Target Management / RSE we currently have some "Discouraged Access" into Compare functionality, so we'd be interested in seeing more API.
Martin, have you logged an enhancement request for the API you require? If you have, what is the bug number? If you have not, please do so. At this stage in the game, it is unlikely that we will get approval for more API but if you let me know what API you require, I'll have a look. As for this item, it was intended more as an indication that we would be focusing more of our efforts on Compare. We have done a fair bit or work already and there isn't much more on our list. Of the specific things mentioned in this plan, the two items we didn't really get to are full editor functionality and breaking out the Outline view. However, we did introduce file buffer support so you can open a Compare editor and Java editor (for instance) on the same file and both will remain in-sync.
We have not yet logged an enhancement request. Although we do have a desire to get rid of non-API platform usage (and we know there's a strong urge to do so for Europa), we currently need to look at more pressing issues. I'm watching changes you folks come up with, and we may adapt to what you can come up, but we currently don't have the bandwidth to analyze the exact situation and make recommendations.
I have just released a preference to put the Compare structure in the outline view. With that, I believe we can declare this plan item completed.
