[news.eclipse.tools] Menu selections for all actions?

[David Gallardo <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In projects I've worked on the past, developing commercial shrink-wrap 
software, one of the requirements was that it had to be possible to 
accomplish everything using the main menu. Alternate UI means (context 
menus, toolbars, etc) were never to replace a menu item.

It seems that in Eclipse that it's often possible to do something using 
only a tool button or a context menu; for example, to create a scrapbook 
page (as far as I can tell) the only way to do so is by using the tool 
button in the Java perspective. Am I correct? Also, as far as I can 
tell, the only way to add a watch variable to the expression view in the 
debugger is by using the context menu in expression view.

In principle, I think it's a good idea to have a requirement that 
everything be available from the main menu, because this makes it 
possible to find every available feature in a consistent manner. As it 
is, it's often hard to figure out what or where the various Eclipse 
features are.

On the other hand, this can make for some pretty unwieldy menus...