Re: use case introduction (was RE: [riena-dev] wizards in riena?)

[Christian Campo <christian.campo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Todd,

Am 28.04.2009 um 21:58 schrieb Todd Lee:

Thanks Christian,

So after alot of reading ;) it seems to me that Riena is pretty much in the sweet spot of what I'm looking for. Granted, my application only scratches the surface of Riena's capabilities (standalone client only right now, nothing on the remote/server side).

good to hear the part with the "sweet spot". no problem if its just a client. we have projects too where the customer justs wants the client.

As I mentioned earlier, my company ships an IDE based 'Engineering Development Kit' for use by developers of applications for digital signal processors (we make the chips).

The requirement has come up for something of a 'lite' kit for use by non-technical users who simply have a device on their desk and need to connect to it (using a variety of proprietary/off the shelf communications hardware/protocols) and download applications/EEPROM images onto it etc...

As far as tool support that would be useful for us, the following is based on my design thus far:

1) dockable/detached view support
- picture a 'common navigator' based view that shows applicable file resources which can be dragged and dropped on my main sub-application view showing currently connected devices (actionHandler kicks off download to device)
- also optional console window that shows output of download process

so detached view support is for you :-)

The prototyping that Elias has done looks really promising. I'm imagining a console view that can be opened below the active subapplication and perhaps a resource window that can be opened beside

2) simple wizard support
- one of our requirements is 'wizard' like support to help our customers connect their devices. This generally involves stepwise selection of appropriate device, communication protocol/interface settings and saving the configuration. I suppose that in the absence of traditional wizards this could still be accomplished using a form view with progressive UI filters (looking at the playground in the example client) that proceed with the stepwise enablement of controls as selections are made/info is input.

one important point about UI filter, a limitation if you want, is that ADDING a UIFilter HAS TO ADD a RESTRICTION. You can add and activate many UIFilters and take them away in any order. So want you want can be done but just to be clear about how you do it. You can not add a UIfilter to enable a field. You can however remove a UIFilter that disabled a field.

This was however necessary given the current marker infrastructur that we have. Likewise a UI Filter can hide fields, views, menu items etc. or add validation rules. No filter can be defined to make things visible.

Just a different way of thinking and no general hurdle to implement anything that you are sketching out.

3) interaction with external applications
- we use launch configurations right now to kickoff utility apps used to download programs to a device etc. If there was an easier way to do this in riena, it would save a lot of dependencies on the existing eclipse core/debug framework

we didnt have yet the requirement. We can always discuss that, add a bug and talk about how to implement that, maybe you even like to contribute a generic functionality to Riena.

4) easy command line application execution with arguments
- Ideally, I'd like to be able to fire up my exported product using a basic shell extension (ie - right click on an EEPROM image file and select 'Open With > My Fancy Riena Application') The SwtApplication can start a specific subapplication based on the file argument passed.

That should be possible either with what we have or some additions.

That's pretty much it, and I realize some of it is probably out of the scope of the Riena project (but you asked ;) so you got my wishlist) - everything else, you've already provided, with the simplified/customizable UI and easy navigation. Thanks again, looking forward to digging a little deeper!

I really rather like to focus on how to do it than if we do because it might be out of scope. If you like to use Riena and there is a bit missing to accomplish that, this would in general mean that its in scope especially if these are UI "thingys". We dont write device drivers for EEPROMS (that is out of scope) but you dont expect us to. There is always a chance that we might implement something NOT "next week" after you enter it in Bugzilla if its something that we dont need and we are short in ressources. But contributing by you (after a lively discussion how to do it) should always work.

Cheers,
Todd

cheers

christian

-----Original Message-----
From: riena-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Christian Campo
Sent: Tue 4/28/2009 12:04 PM
To: Riena Developers list
Subject: Re: [riena-dev] wizards in riena?

Hi Todd,

no question is naive (to start with), it just points to a topic that
is not enough explained :-)

The simple answer would be to say "look at the Riena proposal, No tool
support" http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/riena :-)

We have however implemented a little wizard once which is currently
not so well maintained that enables you to create Riena apps. However
the use is limited because you can basically generate a sample
application in your own namespace with your own packages but still it
will be the same as the samples that you can already see in the target
platform as samples.

If you want the way to go is to request an enhancement and file a bug
report. :-)

You can also start with telling us what kind of applications you are
building and what kind of tool support would be helpful.....

christian

Am 28.04.2009 um 20:14 schrieb Todd Lee:

Hi there,

As I work through my investigation of riena for use in our product,

I've noticed that there doesn't seem to be anything analogous to the

notion of the Wizard/WizardPage in vanilla eclipse. Is there a plan

for wizard support (ie Wizard/WizardPage Rigets like you seem to

have for some other dialog based elements) or is the intent that the

lnf be applied to the standard wizard/wizardpages directly without

the need for the riget interface? (I seem to recall reading

somewhere that setting a system property could apply the riena lnf

globally...?)

My apologies if this question ends up being naive, I'm definitely

learning as I go...

Thanks, Todd

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