| Re: [e4-dev] Important e4 call reminder |
Things I commit my personal time to work on:
- Producing a complete "Eclipse application services" API a.k.a. "the twenty things". By "complete" I mean that you can produce non-trivial UI components only using that API, but it won't support all the corner cases or else it wouldn't simplify anything.
- For Java/SWT
- And for _javascript_/Web UIs (embedding of web UI components in Eclipse)
- Better communication about what's going on in e4 (too much of my time has been consumed by 3.5.0 and 3.5.1 unfortunately).
Things I would like to work on if I have time:
- Making our demo applications more real to show how the application services can be used.
- Refactoring the e4 workbench and renderer code to use techniques like dependency injection that we advertise clients should use but don't ourselves.
- Generally keeping an eye on the code we produce for good style, minimal dependencies, and best practices.
Boris
Hallvard Traetteberg wrote on 08/27/2009 04:22:59 AM:
> Tom Schindl wrote:
>
> > Because I'm unsure whether I can attend the call tomorrow I'm sending
> > out this via mail.
>
> Inspired by Tom, I would like to elaborate on my interests, which is UI
> development based on modeling technologies.
>
> I see the current e4 as a very interesting prototype, with many
> interesting aspects and techniques. At some point (now?) we should try
> to be explicit about what we've learned, what we believe in and converge
> on what should be the future direction. E.g. if our experience shows
> that EMF is a solid foundation, I think we should discuss if and how to
> utilize it more broadly, rather than for some parts here and there.
>
> Many issues are difficult to discuss, because we don't have the
> necessary knowledge (or time to gain it) of each others work. E.g. I
> think the renderers for TM and the modeled workbench essentially try to
> solve the same problem, but we haven't had time to learn from each other.
>
> Although we have demos that showcase what various components provide,
> I'm not sure what they actually prove. E.g. TM and XWT seem very similar
> (at the webinar yesterday someone asked why e4 includes both) and the
> demo shows that XWT is more mature. But the interesting thing is the
> difference, e.g. how EMF and XML compares.
>
> What have I learned from TM (so far):
> - Using EMF works well and saves time, both for modeling and
> implementing tools. I'm confident EMF is a good choice.
> - The rendering mechanism wasn't that hard to make, and the use of model
> annotations to drive the renderer shows potential. I think I have
> managed to make a good separation between the general rendering strategy
> and the widget-specific parts.
> - Scalability of the renderer is an issue, both resources (time and
> memory) as model instances become large, and complexity, as the model grows.
> - Although I have recently (after 0.9) added a simple styling model, it
> is in general difficult to handle the process of (in)validating (notice
> an important change) and (re)styling (which parts should be refreshed)
> cleanly and efficiently.
> - I've explored several ways of making TM extensible, with different
> levels of power and complexity.
> - Scripting provides great flexibility in two ways: 1) the underlying
> Java-objects can be given extra methods when used as _javascript_ objects,
> and 2) with scripts as part of the model, a lot more of the UI can be
> customized with simple means.
> - Without better editor and debugging support, using _javascript_ is a lot
> of trial and error.
> - There's a big extra benefit when using EMF for the application's data
> model, because it simplifies integrating with the UI and the scripting
> support can be used for the application data.
>
> In general, I'm sure I could learn a lot from the experience with the
> modeled workbench design and implementation.
>
> Things I commit my personal time to work to:
> --------------------------------------------
> - more complete coverage of widgets, particularly trees and tables
> - integrate 2d graphics (I have an SWT-specific version of Piccolo
> running, and a renderer for basic scene-graph nodes like rectangles,
> polylines, text and image)
> - implement a more complete demo, e.g. the contacts demo
> - explore how CDO can be used for managing shared UIs
>
> Things I would work on if I have time (money isn't an issue, but I would
> like the work to lead to academic publications, which is "money" in my
> "business"):
> --------------------------------------------------
> - integration with the modeled workbench, and learning from their experience
> - better support for editing and debugging _javascript_
> - an Ajax renderer
>
> I hope we can find time to discuss these issues, in the mailing
> list/wiki/bugzilla and at ESE.
>
> Hallvard
>
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