Description Christoph Laeubrich 2021-10-15 02:42:31 EDT

While refactoring the (pde) StyledBundleLabelProvider I really wondered why there is no interface for such kind of usage as it seems quite useful for making (generic) formated labels. 

I then noticed that JFace already offers something similar with DelegatingStyledCellLabelProvider.IStyledLabelProvider but it is embedded in the DelegatingStyledCellLabelProvider and is missing a getText(Object) that seems to be required in some places e.g. for automatic ordering and redifines a getImage method.

So I wonder if it would be an option to have a dedicated interface that extends ILabelProvider in the following way:

public interface IStyledLabelProvider extends ILabelProvider {

	/**
	 * Returns the styled text label for the given element
	 *
	 * @param element the element to evaluate the styled string for
	 *
	 * @return the styled string.
	 */
	StyledString getStyledString(Object element);

	@Override
	default String getText(Object element) {
		StyledString styledString = getStyledString(element);
		if (styledString == null) {
			return null;
		}
		return styledString.getString();
	}
}

once the interface is added the DelegatingStyledCellLabelProvider.IStyledLabelProvider could simply extend the new IStyledLabelProvider for backward compatibility.