Re: [platform-ant-dev] feedback

[Jared Burns <jared-eclipse@xxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with the ideas you've mentioned so far, Erich.

I started poking at the idea of a split-pane earlier today and it doesn't look 
like it'll be much trouble. Adding the split pane took all of 10 seconds, but 
then I got the idea to support drag and drop from one pane to the other (you 
just want to drag targets into the "active targets pane", right??) and I got 
sidetracked for a while. It looks like it's a real hassle to get drag and 
drop working (it requires system.out debugging...), so I'm just going to 
scrap that for now. :-)

My priorities on the implementation side:
1. The ability to manually add a build file.
2. The ability to evoke a scoped search for build files.
3. The ability to do true selection-based launching (right click on a target 
and say "Run").
4. The ability to run multiple targets and supply ordering. The split-pane 
idea is the best thing I've heard so far, so I'm planning to start on that 
once the first 3 bits are done.

All of these things require a bit of restructuring under the hood, which I'm 
working on now.

- Jared

On Saturday 23 November 2002 07:14 am, Erich Gamma wrote:
> >But I disagree, from the command line I can run
> >(& order) multiple targets, there is no reason we shouldn't be able to do
> >so in Eclipse.
>
> This is a fair point. So then let's try to come up with
> a UI that covers both the simple and the advanced case better.
>
> The main problems I see with the current UI with regard to multiple targets
> are:
> *     overloading of the selection, i.e., there are two selection kinds
>       inside a single view (the sticky selection for nodes I have double
>       clicked and the ordinary tree selection)
>
> *     the ordering isn't verry explicit presented and
>       "ASCII-coded" only, i.e., shown by additional number suffixes in the
>       lables. There is no way to manipulate the ordering directly.
>
> The goal is to support both the simple one target case (i.e. by
> double clicking a target or script) and the more advanced multi target
> case.
>
> To address this goal I suggest to separate the run order from
> the target selection in the AntView. This can be achieved by introducing
> a separate Run Order pane. So the Ant view would have two panes:
>
> *     Target Selection
>             the existing tree viewer with actions to:
>             - run the current selection
>             - append a target selection to the Run Order pane
>             - add/remove build scripts
> *     Run Order  (a smaller pane 1/3 of the target selection extent)
>             a list/table viewer showing the selected targets with actions
> to:
>             - move a target up or down
>             - remove a target from the run order
>             - clear
>             - run all (in the order as defined in the list)
> Short cuts can be provided to append a target selection in the target
> selection to the run order list (e.g. toolbar button in the run order pane
> that copies the selection from the target selection pane or clicking with a
> modifier).
>
> Pros/cons:
> -     an additional pane
> -     more gestures in the multiple target case
> +     less gestures for the single target case
> +     the run order is explicitly represented (no ASCII coding)
> +     the run order can be manipulated
>
> Obviously another cons is the effort require to implement this...
>
> --erich