[News.eclipse.foundation] Re: What is the future of RCP?

[Robert Möstl <robert.moestl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

first it is to say that I'm very satisfied with the answers to my 
question, thank you Boris, who pointed me in the right direction, and Ian.

When the RCP link was replaced on eclipse.org in middle of March I did 
half a day of research to get a glue what had happened. To summarize it 
took me far too long to understand that RCP is part of Equinox. So a 
little announcement on the top of the site would have been very helpful 
to me. And this could be helpful for other potential developers too. I 
just imagine I'm telling a friend about how great Eclipse RCP is. I 
guess my friend wouldn't be very happy if he visits eclipse.org and 
hardly can find information on RCP and desktop application development 
in general.

Secondly isn't it a little bit confusing if the welcome page of 
eclipse.org says Eclipse is used for:
- Enterprise Development -> "Ok, I understand"
- Embedded + Device Development -> "Ok, I understand"
- Equinox Portal (former RCP): "what the hell is Equinox?" (By the way: 
wasn't it just an implementation of OSGi? Now Equinox seems to be more a 
non-technical term)
- ...

Finally it is to say that in the current status of the website I don't 
get it that Eclipse can be used for desktop application development too. 
In my humble opinion this has to be changed.

Kind regards,
Robert



Mike Milinkovich wrote:
> "Robert Möstl" <robert.moestl@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
> news:ftvaln$r13$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> I am in agreement with what Ian and Boris have already said, but just wanted 
> to reinforce one item.
>
> > But will eclipse be an application platform in the future too?
>
> This is the key question. And the answer is most emphatically *yes*. All 
> that is happening is that the scope of Eclipse as an application integration 
> platform is widening. We focused 100% on RCP when the projects were working 
> on desktop application integration technologies. Now that we have projects 
> working on server-side (Swordfish, EclipseLink, RAP) and device-side (eRCP) 
> runtimes, the messaging is widening to accomodate that.
>
> Put another way, RCP is now part of the Eclipse runtime story, rather than 
> being *the* Eclipse runtime story.
>
> We at the EMO always struggle with trying to deliver marketing messages that 
> try to explain what is going on in the projects. Let's face it: we don't 
> tell the projects what to do, so our marketing is largely post-facto. It is 
> trying to explain where the projects have already headed. It's an 
> interesting challenge. Especially since our marketing resources are so 
> limited.
>
> Is this helpful? Do you feel we are on the right track, or do we need to 
> reconsider our approach?