[news.eclipse.platform.swt] Re: MDI and SWT/Eclipse IDE

[alun@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Alun)]

Hi Martin,

Not sure if MDI is outdated really. For certain applications I 
think it's very well suited. For example, all of the major 
drawing applications (Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand etc) 
use the MDI model. In cases where you want to let users create 
multiple views of a document, and to be able to arrange those 
views in arbitrary ways on the desktop, then MDI is the way 
to go. As Microsoft point out (I can't believe I'm agreeing
with Microsoft) using an MDI requires a fair degree of 
sophistication on the part of the user, so this has to be 
taken into account also.

Most applications that use MDI have a default mode in which 
the active child window is always maximized, and the current
view is changed via toolbar icons. In this way the novice 
user doesn't even know they're using an MDI. I think this 
is a good approach to take.

In the current 2.1 release of SWT true MDI isn't supported. I've 
impemented an MDI extension to SWT for Windows platforms, which
you can download here:

http://www.eadfrith.org/swt

To recreate the MDI-ish look of eclipse you can use JFace, which adds
models and decorators on top of SWT. Now, as for which JFace classes
to use... :-)

Cheers,

Alun





ml@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Hi

> I've heard that MDI app's cannot be produced in SWT. How is the MDI-ish 
> look in the Eclipse IDE accomplished then?

> By the way, is it true that MDI is outdated? What has replaced it?

> Regards and thanks,
> Martin