[gmf-dev] WrapLabel Replacement

[Cherie Revells <crevells@xxxxxxxxxx>]

GMF Developers,

I am continuing with the work Syed did
to refactor our WrapLabel to use GEF's text layout classes instead of handling
the wrapping ourselves in GMF.
Bug
162932 WrapLabel should use Gef's text layout

There are a number of issues with our
current WrapLabel that we hope to fix with this.  Specifically, 
Bug
136871 [NoteTextLabel] TextDirectEditManager does not allow to use WrapLabels
with edit parts other then TextCompartmentEditPart
Bug
145826 [NoteTextLabel] TextDirectEditManager does not work with GraphicalEditParts
Bug
156771 [NoteTextLabel] WrapLabel position changes upon multiple invocations
with same text.
Bug
160380 [NoteTextLabel] WrapLabel text not drawn properly when text alignment
is centered.
Bug
160382 [NoteTextLabel] WrapLabel's focus rectangle being drawn away from
WrapLabel itself
Bug
161628 [NoteTextLabel] Multi Line Text is not working properly
Bug 194944 WrapLabel is cutting off
bottom of text in compartment's name label
Text justification while editing should
match that of the label.
The caret location when direct editing
does not always match where the mouse was clicked.
Added support for BiDi character set
and double byte characters.
Text cut with no indication that there
is more text, but it doesn't fit on the note.

I plan on deprecating the existing WrapLabel
figure and creating a new one with similar functionality that uses GEF's
text layout classes to handle the wrapping, caret positioning, bidi issues,
etc.  This should resolve many of the issues.

I also want to remove/deprecate any
code in GMF that assumes that the figure of a TextCompartmentEditPart is
a WrapLabel (or the new equivalent).  Clients should be able to easily
use any figure in a TextCompartmentEditPart subclass (e.g. GEF's Label
if they don't need wrapping, their own custom label figure).  I am
thinking of introducing some new interfaces that the TextCompartmentEditPart
can adapt to if they wish to support generic label functionality in their
custom label figure (e.g. text selection) so that a default set of editpolicies
can continue to work with the TextCompartmentEditPart's figure.

The current WrapLabel supports multiple
icons.  I am considering not supporting this in the new version as
it was developed for a specific use case and I know of no case where it
is now being used..  If anyone feels supporting multiple icons in
a label is common enough that it should be in GMF, let me know.

Let me know if you have any requirements
or feedback regarding this work.

Thanks,
Cherie