[news.eclipse.platform] Re: Synchronizing open editors on the same file

["Marc E" <marc.esher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I found the difference: TextEditor uses TextFileDocumentProvider instead of 
FileDocumentProvider.

Interestingly enough, this is in the javadoc:

* Text file document providers use {@linkplain 
org.eclipse.core.filebuffers.ITextFileBuffer text file buffers}
* to access the file content. This allows to share it between various 
clients including
* headless ones. Text file document providers should be preferred over file 
document
* providers due to this advantage.

Here's one of those cases where a dude like me says, "if it's preferred, 
then why doesn't the wizard generate code that uses this one instead!?"  I"m 
sure there's quite a good reason.  For example, I don't see anything 
immediately obvious for partitioning, so maybe that's it. Not sure.

Anyway.... looks like I at least found the path to go down. I sure was 
hoping for a 3-line "oh, dude, just add this listenener..." kind of answer, 
which so often seems to be the case.

Time to get my game face on!

marc


"Eric Rizzo" <eclipse-news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
news:gncqno$u5d$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On 2/16/2009 1:10 PM, Marc E wrote:
> > All,
> > I'm interested in contributing this feature to an open source project
> > based on Eclipse. I have done a fair amount of plugin programming but
> > never any Editor programming.
> > Basically, the editor in this project doesn't currently support
> > synchronization between two open editors on the same file. For example,
> > if I have any text file, and I open it in the Default Text Editor, then
> > choose "New Editor" and modify that file in one editor, the other editor
> > automatically reflects those changes. I'd like to add that behavior into
> > the editor in this project.
> > Can someone point me down the right path?
>
> I think this is more of a fundamental design problem than a particular 
> code problem. The editor in question must be using some kind of backing 
> model that can be shared between editor instances. If it does not have 
> some kind og in-memory model that is sharable, I'm not sure if you can do 
> what you want.
> If EMF is involved, this is quite doable. But if not I would first look at 
> the code of the basic text editor to see how they are doing it. Try 
> org.eclipse.ui.editors.text.TextEditor
>
> Hope this helps,
> Eric