[eclipse-dev] Updating schemas to take advantage of identifiers

[Chris Aniszczyk <zx@xxxxxxxxxx>]

In the last arch call, I mentioned that
people should consider updating schemas that are relevant to take advantage
of the new schema identifier attribute. Most of the information you need
is in this blog post:

        http://mea-bloga.blogspot.com/2008/02/cooking-in-pde-kitchen.html

Note that not all references can be
expressed using this feature. I was shooting for simplicity and also the
80/20 rule when coming up with this functionality. For example, stuff like
partId (in actionPartAssocation) that references both viewId's and editorId's
can't be expressed. However, if the schema expressed things different that
partId was an element and it contained a list of viewId's or editorId's
as children, then things would work beautifully. In the future, we should
come up with some best practices how to define extension points that involves
referencing identifiers in other extensions.

I'd recommend that all capable SDK extension
points take advantage of this functionality. There are some early adopters
already in Platform UI and Debug with some positive feedback. For example,
Paul Webster smiles every-time he has to create a command or key-binding
now with this functionality... in the past he would cry :)

If you're still confused about this
functionality, feel free to ping me or catching me IRC. On the next arch
call, we can address specific concerns.

Cheers,

---
Chris Aniszczyk | IBM Lotus | Eclipse Committer | http://mea-bloga.blogspot.com
| +1.860.839.2465