Re: [platform-ui-dev] Editor Reuse and the Debugger

[Jared Burns <jared-eclipse@xxxxxxxxx>]

> - we should not have editor management policies that differ on a
> per-perspective basis, because the editors are shared across perspectives
> in the same window

I consider the fact that editors are shared across perspectives to be a 
strong argument for per-perspective editor management policies. Perspectives 
should be conscious of the fact that the changes they make to the editor 
layout will affect other perspectives. They should take steps to assure that 
they play well with others.

For example, let's say I have an open editor threshold of 10. I'm working in 
the Java perspective and I've got my 10 editors open. Now I debug my program. 
As I'm stepping through my code, the debugger is opening new editors. Each 
time the debugger opens an editor, one of the editors I was working on in the 
Java perspective closes. Now I finish debugging and go back to the Java 
perspective to do some more work but all the editors I had open in the Java 
perspective are gone now thanks to the debugger. With the current policy, the 
debugger pollutes (by addition) and erodes (by deletion) the context of my 
Java perspective.

This particular case is the reason that I would prefer the debugger to do its 
own editor management. It should reuse a single editor for showing the editor 
location of a stack frame.

In the more general case, the editor sharing policy strikes me as a problem 
that's only going to get worse as the Eclipse tools market matures.

It is tolerable (and only barely in light of the debugger editor situation) 
for the Eclipse development team right now because we use Eclipse for only 
one thing: working on Eclipse. As more tools roll out, there will be more 
opportunities for users to be working in completely disparate contexts in a 
single Eclipse session. For these users, editor sharing between perspectives 
will be a nightmare.  If I want to have a web development perspective open 
with 10 html files and a Java development perspective open with 10 Java 
files, am I out of luck? We can sell the fact that Eclipse lets tools work 
together, but we're going to have a hard time selling the fact that Eclipse 
won't let them work seperately.

Maybe I'm missing something...

- Jared