Comment 1 Nick Edgar 2002-01-27 22:23:00 EST

Please consider this change.

Comment 2 Ian Petersen 2002-01-31 17:10:20 EST

Randy and I discussed this change and here's what we came up with:

There's no easy way to force existing preference pages to do this (aside from 
releasing a breaking API change) because most preference pages don't keep a 
dirty bit.

It looks like the only reasonable solution is to create a new interface that 
extends IPreferencePage (such as IPreferencePageWithDirtyState, or something 
more elegant).  If we change PreferencePage to implement the new interface, and 
supply reasonable implementations for the new methods such as

public boolean isDirty() {
    return true;
}

then existing pages won't notice the difference and the pages provided with 
Eclipse could be changed to exhibit the behaviour we want.

The problem with this approach is that some pages will appear "smart" and 
others will appear "dumb" and the preferences dialog may not be self-
consistent.  If this isn't an issue, then I can get to work and fix it, 
otherwise, we'll need to discuss this further.

Comment 3 Nick Edgar 2002-02-01 14:54:13 EST

Not critical for 2.0.  Defer.

Comment 4 Randy Giffen 2002-08-09 11:36:55 EDT

Reopen to investigate

Comment 5 Andy Brook 2002-09-11 11:36:56 EDT

Im developing swt apps so would benefit from this behaviour! any activity on this?

Comment 6 DJ Houghton 2004-11-09 15:17:59 EST

*** Bug 11558 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7 Tod Creasey 2006-06-22 08:33:59 EDT

There are currently no plans to work on this feature

Comment 8 Hubert Gajewski 2008-11-13 09:51:23 EST

(In reply to comment #7)
> There are currently no plans to work on this feature

2 years ago there were no plans to fix it. What about the current day? Could you fix it?

Currently behavior is wrong (severity should be higher) - user should see that changes were saved...

Comment 9 Paul Webster 2008-11-13 11:46:30 EST

(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #7)
> > There are currently no plans to work on this feature
> 
> 2 years ago there were no plans to fix it. What about the current day? Could
> you fix it?

This is marked as WONTFIX (not defered).

AFAICS there is no way to ask a preference dialog (and current preference page contributions) if there are changes waiting to be applied.

This could be re-opened if 

1) someone came up with a design that would work and was willing to contribute it, or

2) this should be considered for preferences work in e4 (as the eclipse 4.0 work)

PW

Comment 10 Helmut J. Haigermoser 2011-12-20 09:30:24 EST

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > (In reply to comment #7)
> > > There are currently no plans to work on this feature
> > 
> > 2 years ago there were no plans to fix it. What about the current day? Could
> > you fix it?
> 
> This is marked as WONTFIX (not defered).
> 
> AFAICS there is no way to ask a preference dialog (and current preference page
> contributions) if there are changes waiting to be applied.
> 
> This could be re-opened if 
> 
> 1) someone came up with a design that would work and was willing to contribute
> it, or
> 
> 2) this should be considered for preferences work in e4 (as the eclipse 4.0
> work)
> 
> PW

CQ:WIND00084361

I do agree that this Apply behavior feels wrong from a user's perspective.
However, looks like the system was designed this way and would need new API to make this work so this is not an easy bugfix..

Paul, did we invest time in this in the E4 effort?

Helmut

Comment 11 Paul Webster 2011-12-20 09:38:02 EST

(In reply to comment #10)
> 
> Paul, did we invest time in this in the E4 effort?
> 

No, there were some ideas for preferences work in E4 but AFAIK it didn't include anything in the UI itself.

PW