Let us show you a little more information, to help you understand better our proposal.
The Eclipse architecture
http://www.jdg2e.com/ch08.architecture/doc/index.html
This picture has quite a good
description of the Eclipse architecture.
Altough many people use Eclipse
as an IDE for Java, its components can be customized to create whole new
products (not only tools or IDEs), considering that Eclipse is also a platform.
This means that you can customize it to your needs, adding views, forms,
editors and use many other things that are already available for use, like UI,
IO, preference pages and so on.
Here are some links with products
using Eclipse as platform:
http://developer.motorola.com/docstools/motodevstudio/
The MOTODEV Studio for Android is
an IDE for developing Android software, that is built upon Eclipse and uses
Sequoyah to provide some features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eclipse-based_software
This is a list of Eclipse-based
software, to show you that there's much more software that can be developed
using Eclipse than just IDE's. For all these softwares, their developers could
use our feature to help them translate the program to other languages.
http://marketplace.eclipse.org/
This is a repository of programs
that the Eclipse Foundation maintain. You can also find all sorts of programs
here, integrated to use while developing in Eclipse or standalone.
For more information about
Eclipse as platform see:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich_Client_Platform
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-RCP-1/tutorial1.html
PDE
As you should already know at this
point, Eclipse products are built by means of plug-ins. In order to create your
own plug-ins (and so add your own functionalities) you need tools.
Here is where PDE comes to the
rescue. The Plugin Development Environment is an Eclipse project that provides
several tools aimed to plugin development.
More info:
http://help.eclipse.org/helios/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.pde.doc.user/guide/intro/pde_overview.htm
(take a careful look at the “Concepts” item)
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-PDE-does-plugins/PDE-intro.html
Sequoyah LFE
One of the tools/funcionalities of PDE is allowing localization of plug-ins.
Now comes the fun part: our main
goal in this GSoC project is to extend our editor to allow it to understand
Eclipse project files! This way, anyone who develops an Eclipse application can
make good use of our tools to easily localize their product.
For this to become a reality, two
main actions should be taken:
- Create the new schema that makes the editor understand Eclipse projects (it would be one of the "Platform impl" in the picture at http://www.eclipse.org/sequoyah/components/localization.php).
-
Extend the data model support to more than one
scope, also allowing it to be changed ‘on the fly‘. Now it only understands one schema at a time and we need to make it understand more than one scope at the same time (e.g., Android, Java, Eclipse, or any other schema that Sequoyah users decide to implement).
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Sequoyah/LFE_documentation
This class diagram is under
development, explaining a little better some of the main classes of our
plugins.
Please read carefully all these information. We know it's a lot, and we think you might have some questions after you read it. Do not hesitate to send us a message! We'll be glad to help. :)
Just remember you have to enter your proposal in the system before April 8th.