Re: [platform-ui-dev] Hiding functionality using platform-defined action

[Tod Creasey <Tod_Creasey@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The SDK will only be supplying the activities we currently ship (namely 
Java Development, Java Debugging and Plug-in Development).   They are in 
the org.eclipse.platform plug-in only you you will not have to use them if 
you do not want to.

roles have been replaced by categories. A category is functionally the 
same thing. People had too many different ideas of what a role should mean 
semantically so we named it something less confusing.

You should be careful about defining activities in your actual plug-ins as 
it forces whoever wants to use them in thier own Eclipse setup to have to 
take them into consideration in thier own design which can get very 
difficult on large projects. The rule of thumb we use is that if your 
plug-in does not refer to the activity directly it should not be defined 
in it.

Tod






"John Ruud" <jruud@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
04/09/2004 06:27 PM
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[platform-ui-dev] Hiding functionality using platform-defined actions?






We’re building an application on top of the Eclipse platform, but would 
like to hide some of the platform functionality based on the user (role). 
It is not necessary to enforce these restrictions; we simply don’t want 
some users to get confused by being presented with too many options. 
 
I’ve been experimenting with using ‘activities’ for handling this task and 
it generally seems to work very well. However, I’m looking for a reliable 
way of for example hiding ‘debugging’ and ‘team’ functionality from 
‘end-users’. 
 
I suppose I could define all the activities that make up the platform 
myself, but it seems more reliable if either the platform (the branding 
plugin) or each contributing plugin would contribute these basic 
activities, as each activity may span several plugins and ids. Does it 
seem reasonable that the platform would contribute a set of basic 
activities (for example ‘debug’, ‘ant’, ‘update’ etc.) in order to 
simplify hiding some of the platform functionality? 
 
Also, it would be useful if the platform would support grouping of 
activities. I think something like org.eclipse.ui.roles would be useful, 
but it seems to be missing from the latest builds. Are there any plans for 
adding it back in?
 
Thanks,
John