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Re: [platform-text-dev] RevisionRulerColumn in textViewer 
Hi Eugene,
I guess you already captured this request in bug 85751 <https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=85751>: add a way that ruler columns can be contributed to any text editor - either via API or an extension point. This request is absolutely valid and we discussed doing so before implementing the revision info column. We decided that creating a good API was too much work to fit in our 3.2 plan currently and just added another named column. This decision may be revisited if the need for more columns comes up.
If we added API for contributed columns, we would probably also provide an abstract base implementation taking care of boilerplate code and offering some event/notification mechanism for line-events (like "line selected", "line clicked").
One problem that would arise is that we have to stay compatible with the existing API of CompositeRuler. CompositeRuler makes some assumptions about the contained ruler columns (e.g. every column consists of a single Canvas and no child controls) that we should get rid of before adding the API. Other questions that need to be answered: 

   * context menu - should the ruler continue to show the same context
     menu for all columns, or should a column (optionally) be able to
     have its own?
   * accessibility - with more and more information in the ruler, can
     we offer a way to make the ruler accessible (e.g. give focus to
     the ruler)?
   * painting: currently all ruler columns implement their own
     double-buffer painting, which may not scale well.
   * column ordering - this is currently done by the editor as the
     controlling instance - how would ordering work with arbitrary columns?
   * overview ruler - should there also be additional overview rulers?
     probably...
   * resizing - should rulers support (horizontal) resizing? this would
     be interesting to "expand" the condensed information upon user request
By the way, I wonder what are the plans to add support for revision ruler to CVS plugin?
See bugs 114333 <https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=114333> and 113136 <https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=113136> for what's going on in that area.
Thanks for your interest - I hope this answers your questions. I will add some of this to bug 85751. 

Tom

Tom Eicher
IBM Eclipse Team - Text Components

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