Re: [platform-ui-dev] (no subject)

[Randy_Giffen@xxxxxxx]

There is another interesting newsgroup thread on this topic:
Re: Specifying editor for files w/o extension??? 11/16/2001
Specifically I like the following idea for editor registration:

"Very quickly I would say there a several core mechanisms that can be brought to bear here and that they are NOT necessarily mutually exclusive, but rather can work together nicely if architected properly: 
    1. file extensions 
    2. magic parsing 
    3. special intelligence for files of type XML based on schema/DTD or simply the primary element 
    4. mime types 
"

Editor registration is an area that we would like to improve but it is not on the plan for 2.0. Would you be interested in participating in some work on this area?

"Gary Johnston" <gjohnsto@xxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx 03/06/2002 02:35 PM Please respond to platform-ui-dev

To:        platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx         cc:        Kevin_Haaland@xxxxxxx         Subject:        [platform-ui-dev] (no subject)

We have written a specialized editor for a particular kind of XML file (a Struts configuration file, see http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/index.html) as one small part of some more grandiose Struts tooling that we're working on.  The problem is that the user can name her Struts config. file(s) pretty much anything she wants (i.e., it can have any valid name which doesn't even have to end with ".xml").  So we can't register our editor by file name or extension, which are the only currently supported ways of doing it, so there's really no way for us to register our editor at all (in our plugin.xml).

If the user uses one of our wizards to create a Struts config. file we know we can programmatically set our editor to be the default editor for it, but that only works for that person in that workspace.  That is, the association isn't propagated to other team members who may need to edit it.  So, this is inadequate.  It also doesn't work if the user creates the file some other way (or imports it).

Can anyone think of a good approach for getting our editor associated/registered?

What we'd really like is the ability to register our editor with Struts config. files by some other means.  There was talk at one time about support in 2.0 for some kind of registration by MIME type.  See David Springgay's response in the eclipse.tools newsgroup titled "Re: Editor Registration" dated 9.26.2001.  He actually opened a feature for this (Bugzilla "bug" 2917 - "EC: Need Mime Type Generator (1GKNZLW)".  Does anyone know the status of this? Would it allow us to solve our problem?

Another alternative we thought of was if we had the ability to register our editor by DTD (since it's an XML file).

BTW, a closely related problem is that although a Struts config. file is an XML file, but doesn't have to have ".xml" as its extension, in which case not even the XML editor is associated with it.

Thanks for any help or advice. 

- Gary
___________________________________________
Gary Johnston
WebSphere Enterprise Developer - Struts Tooling Development
IBM Software Group, Research Triangle Park, NC