[eclipse-dev] What's next for eclipse (round 2)

["Kevin Haaland" <Kevin_Haaland@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks to everyone for their response to the major themes in 3.0. I 
already know that there will be more
line items that we want to do than there are committers to do the work. If 
you are interested in helping out
please let us know. We are not picky, if you want to dive into the code 
and earn your commit rights that's 
great  but we are also looking for people who want to help triage defect 
reports, fix bugs, write articles etc. 

I was planning to respond individually to each posting, but  instead of 
spamming the list I decided to
compose a single combined response. 


Submitter:      Trey.Spiva@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Request:        Would like to have the ability to create macros

Trey, what type of macros do you envision? For example, are you looking 
for keyboard 
macros in editors only or are you looking for "full blown" scripting of 
the UI?



Submitter:         <dave.wathen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Request:        Support for generative programming
Request:        Plugins to let 2.1 plugins keep working in 3.0

We will record your request for compiler restructing however it's not 
something that the current eclipse 
commiters are going to be interested in doing without significant 
participation from the community. 
If you end up having time to invest in this idea please let us know. 

We definitely need to minimize the impact of API changes to existing 
plugings otherwise we run the 
risk of undermining the adoption of the 3.0 release. Your idea of adapter 
plugins is one of the strategies
we are considering. How we end up dealing with 2.1 plugins will depend of 
the scope of the changes in 
3.0 which have not been finalized. 


Submitter: <Jeff.Duska@xxxxxxxx>
Request: A 2.2 release this year

We are going to have regular stable milestones throughout the 3.0 
development cycle. For 
those of you who have been tracking our development for a while you know 
that these
stable builds are suitable for "friends of eclipse" and you will need some 
patience when
you find bugs but we do make a concerted effort to make these builds 
usable for people 
who want to stay current with the latest features. 


Submitter: "Hugh Spinks" <lynx@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Request: .NET/C# support  VS.NET absolutely sucks

I'm glad you think that VS.NET sucks. Personally, I would not be that 
harsh, there are 
many areas that the current 2.1 eclipse release needs to improve to be 
competitive. As for 
adding support for .NET/C#, this request received significant positive 
feedback from the 
community. Sounds like a great opportunity for community involvement :-). 
For those who are 
interested, I did a google search for C# and eclipse and found:

        http://www.improve-technologies.com/alpha/esharp/

I have not used this plugin myself but it may be worth a try.

Hugh, and others, can you spend some time and identify what in particular 
you love or hate when
you compare eclipse and java to VS.Sudio and C#/.NET. It would really help 
us identify the features
that matter to you.  For example:

        What is it exactly that makes the .NET framework "Neet" that Java 
is missing
        What is missing/wrong with SWT/JFace to create windows 
applications harder?


Submitter: <Lars.Sonchocky-Helldorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Request: Multi-file search and replace, support for regular expressions

I am not familiar with BBedit so please excuse my ignorance. What is it 
about their support
for this feature that makes it particularly good? 

This would be a useful feature to add, however doing multi-file search and 
replace is a 
solution that was acceptable last century. The 21'st century approach is 
refactoring. 
Wouldn't it be cool if you could have refactoring that supported java and 
jsps?


Submitter: <SMcrae@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Request: Agreed with Lars and added:

        - Full native JSP support
        - Multi-project search and replace
        - Definable syntax coloring mechanism for code display (see 
TextPad: http://textpad.com)
        - Case change option under edit (example: CTRL+L = lower case 
selected text)
        - Recordable Macros (again, see TextPad)
        - user-assignable keystroke to perspectives, not use 
"previous/next perspective" 
         but something like CTRL+ALT+J goes to Java perspective, 
CTRL+ALT+C to CVS perspective


Submitter: <max@xxxxxx>
Request: Agreed with Sean and added request for general navigation 



Submitter: <Lars.Sonchocky-Helldorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Request: Objective-C support
Request: Horizontal split in editors

Definitely an opportunity for the community to implement this. 


Submitter: "Bob Foster" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Request:   Mac OSX support, JDK 1.5 !!!

Yes, our Mac support needs to be better. Did the explanation from John and 
Jeff clear up the intent 
behind the JDK 1.5 line item?


Submitter: <Ed.Burnette@xxxxxxx>
Request: What API are we going to change

No we don't have the list. As a general rule we are not going to be making 
frivolous changes that only
annoy our existing plugin authors.



Submitter: <Peter.Booth@xxxxxx>
Request: Smart typography

I scanned through the presentation. Will need to give this more thought 
but there are definitely some good ideas here. 


Submitter: <DaveO@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Request: Ideas about rich client platform support and fine print about 
wordproccessing, spreadsheet and email perspectives


David, are you going to help us with implementing this support for 3.0?


Submitter <jgossage@xxxxxxxx>
Request: Good ideas on how to get the community to participate in the 3.0 
development process