[news.eclipse.platform.swt] Re: Alternative to Tree/Treeviewer

[Klaus Winter <kwinter1@xxxxxx>]

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:42:31 +0100, Tom Schindl wrote:

> Klaus Winter schrieb:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> i am looking for alternatives to the SWT Tree and the JFace TreeViewer. Our
>> evalution with these controls disclosed some issues. The most important to
>> us are:
>> - the column header is not a control (SWT bug)
>> -- does not allow context menues on column header
>> -- does not allow drags on column headers
> 
> That really bugs me too, did you voted for the bugs?

No, I haven't voted.

>> - huge amount of root items in the tree not possible (Windows bug). 
> 
> Did you thought about another UI-Design I always ask this because IMHO 
> no user can deal with thousand of items at a time.

This is true. Nevertheless, once no filters or grouping are applied on the
given data there are a lot of root items to be displayed at once. And
always forcing some filtering or grouping is nothing i can do. Changing the
UI design is not acceptable. 

I know this is a windows bug and has nothing to do with the SWT
implemntation. The tree implementations on Linux and Mac work quite
performant as far as i can tell. Why don't you limit the maximum number of
root items in these implementations if thousands of root items are useless?
The default display of some arbitrary data is putting them all into the
tree root. IMHO this is a quite common behavior wherever data has to be
displayed. And not being able to do so is a major issue for us.

>> - tree not being aware of cells makes life real hard
>> 
> 
> This is not right any more since JFace 3.3 introduced Grid-like support 
> for SWT-Tables/Trees. See 
> http://wiki.eclipse.org/JFaceSnippets#Snippet026TreeViewerTabEditing
> 
>> The Nebula Grid Widget comes close to the functionality we need. But being
>> an alpha version this is not yet very promising (also i haven't found a
>> roadmap or something about when and how things are progressing). I am glad
>> for any hint to alternatives - be it open source or commercial controls -
>> implemented in SWT.
> 
> KTable comes to my mind. 

Thanks. I'll take a look at it. However, it is not maintained anymore :(.

> It has many features but I haven't used it 
> myself. Did you asked for dates on the nebula list, I think I can 
> remember Chris saying he wants to release the Grid-Control together with 
> 3.4 but I could be wrong.

> To me the Grid code looks fairly stable and I would use it in production 
> code if I would have a need. I use other controls from nebula (like 
> PGroup and PShelf and they work on systems supported by SWT).
> 
> The good thing if you are using stay with Grid/Tree is that they are 
> both supported by JFace.

No, I haven't asked. It's worth a closer look i guess ...

Thanks,
Klaus