[news.eclipse.modeling.gmf] Implementing a search function for gmf edito

[john.blutarsky@xxxxxxxxxxx (John Blutarsky)]

Good afternoon all,

I am trying to implement a search interface for my gmf editor application. 
How I want it to work is to have some kind of a button., when pressed 
displays a swt interface where the user inputs the string for what ever 
attribute of whatever type of node the want to search for.

After pressing a search button the results are displayed in the Outline, 
whereby only the nodes matching the search criteria are left displayed, so 
the user can click on them and the canvas focuses in on their location, as 
would normally be the case with the entries in the Outline.

A few questions:

Has anyone implemented anything like this before?

Is this something that could possibly be included in future releases of 
the GMF editor? How would I go about making this request formally?

I would like to place the button to activate the search interface in 
palette, where is this code located so I could append a button into it? 
Should i just do this in the Pallete part of gmftool and then concine 
functionality later?

Is there a function that refreshes the Outline? Is this called when a new 
element is added to the canvas? 

It is the TreeEditPart that decides what is to be displayed in the 
Outline, would the best thing to have a function to control what is been 
shown here?

How are the Outline and Canvas connected? My guess would be that the 
Canvas is altered (e.g an element is added/removed), then the Outline is 
updated accordingly? Would it possible for the Outline to appear 
differently to the Canvas? Or maybe there should be a second Outline 
?type? window (a Search window) that acts in the same way as the Outline 
with focusing on the element on, how would this be created?


Sorry for so many questions, please answer as many as you can.

Thanking you for your help,

John