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

[Kevin McGuire <eclipse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike, Ian, I find this very confusing.

> Put another way, RCP is now part of the Eclipse runtime story, rather 
> than being *the* Eclipse runtime story.

This is backwards. It should be that Equinox is part of the RCP 
application technology story.

RCP is a set of technologies that span from runtime to UI.  Part of it 
is about bundling, but a huge part is the UI configuration.  If I look 
at Jeff and Jean-Michel's "Eclipse Rich Client Platform", a lot of it is 
in fact about the UI.  In platform-UI we have many classes and API 
specifically for building RCP apps.  Replacing the RCP link with the 
Equinox portal link implies its part of Equinox, and thus part of the 
runtime project. How confusing and misleading!

That aside, after all these years people know the term RCP. I think most 
people equate "RCP" with "Non-IDE Eclipse application with customize 
look and feel".  They see some cool app and ask how it was implemented 
and someone says, "its an Eclipse RCP app".  And they go, "Cool, I wanna 
get me some of that!".  So they go to www.eclipse.org and they see...

Nothing.

I really think we're doing ourselves and the community a disservice 
here. People know RCP as a way to build a certain kind of desktop 
application (the "C" part or RCP).  We should be capitalizing on that 
popularity and mindshare, focusing people on RCP as a solution route 
first, then explain the supporting technologies they have to pick from.

For an example of our poor messaging already in this area, see
http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/eclipse-incubator-e4-dev/msg00421.html

Its great we're promoting Equinox, but we should not be doing so by 
taking all cool things and putting it under the Equinox banner, and by 
doing so, obfuscating the RCP application construction model that we've 
worked so hard to establish.

Regards,
Kevin


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?