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[e4-dev] New Workbench Model CSS engine
I’ve just committed a new CSS engine that operates directly on the E4 Modelled Workbench to the e4 incubator e4.ui repository.  This engine works directly against the EMF model objects (MApplication, MWindow, MPart, etc), as compared to the existing SWT engine which operate against the SWT widget hierarchy.

Why would this be useful?  For example, if you don’t want the Quick Access and Perspective bars (bug 362420), you can add a CSS snippet like the following:

ToolControl#SearchField, ToolControl#PerspectiveSwitcher {
visibility: hidden;
}

This snippet causes the MToolControl visible=false, unlike the SWT solution (https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=362420#c37) which hides the implementing composite but causes its space to still be present.

All of the modelled elements are exposed using the EMF EClass Name (e.g., Application, TrimmedWindow, Part, ToolControl).    The engine currently only exposes the MElementContainer’s children and the contents of an MTrimmedWindow’s TrimBars.

I’ve added support for the following properties; I chose “wm-“ as a prefix for properties specific to the workbench model:

  • icon: the MUILabel iconURI property (must be a URI: e.g., “url(platform:/plugin/…)”)
  • wm-label: the MUILabel label property
  • wm-tooltip: the MUILabel tooltip property
  • wm-toBeRendered: the MUIElement toBeRendered property
  • visibility: the MUIElement visible property (must be “hidden” or “visible”)
  • eclipse-renderer: the MUIElement’s renderer property; this should be renamed to “wm-renderer”, and I’m not entirely sure that it is implemented correctly.

And there’s some support for pseudo elements (Part:active, Part:dirty, Part:closeable) and element tags are exposed as CSS classes.

This new engine has been committed as two bundles, bundles/org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.workbench and tests/org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.workbench.tests to the e4.ui repository:


If you want to experiment using the CSS Scratchpad then you’ll need the latest org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.swt.theme (>= 0.9.300) and the latest org.eclipse.e4.tools.css.spy bundle from the e4.ui repository.

Brian.

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