at.bestsolution.jface32-0.0.1 released

As promised I have released my JFace backport from 3.3 just a view days after 3.2 came out. You can get the ready plugin from my companies SVN-Repository.

JFace and features not part of Eclipse

Today I sit down and thought it is time to provide features JFace won't provide (some of them are marked as later or are refused) in an own project named at.bestsolution.jface. Well 2 features I already had around somewhere in my workspaces:

• TableViewer working with multiple instances of the same object
• Dialog which could restore it's values because it's only hidden

All people interested in the work could as always fetch the sources from my companies SVN-Server. At the moment this plugin only depends on JFace but it's likely that this will change in future and org.eclipse.swt.nebula and at.bestsolution.jface32 will be added as dependencies. I haven't thoroughly tested because I never use it in my daily work so the QA is your part ;-)

How much can happen within one week?

Back from holiday I see JFace's new viewer API evolving from week to week and getting more stable and userfriendly but some parts are not as smooth as they should be some work has to spent. The most markable things changed is that the caching of column-indices is gone completely.

Another important news is that Boris sorted out some VIRTUAL-Table bugs. As of this writing I have integrated all those changes to at.bestsolution.jface32 project. Simply fetch all changes from my companies (BestSolution Systemhaus GmbH) public SVN-Repository.

At the moment all things from JFace HEAD are integrated and because Tod, Boris and I all think that my widget-independency work can go in as is I've already integrated it. JFace integration will follow at the beginning 3.3M3 timeframe.

And last but not less important a new API-function has been added to set multiple filters at once this should avoid us to use all those nasty hacks to avoid flickering, ... .

I think I'll release a first version of the plugin with M2.

Finally to a new JFace project providing snippets to all show common JFace. The new project has been approved by the eclipse PMC and can be found in eclipse's CVS with contribution from Tod and myself

Viewer-Features form 3.3 in Eclipse-3.2

There are many many exciting features added in 3.3 cycle to jface but many people need a solution now and not in 3.3-Timeframe. I myself have a need for some of those feature so I started back-porting them which is at the moment not really hard because at the moment JFace-Viewers doesn't use anything not available in 3.2-sources.

I decided to make them publicly available because I think many also have a need for them. So for those who want to use exciting features added in 3.3 can fetch the sources at in my companies SVN-Directory. Don't forget to do your own QA to ensure everything is working as expected. If you find bugs you can file them to my companies bug-tracking system at http://phpot.bestsolution.at/mantis/login_page.php and I'll try to incooperate them in eclipse bug-tracking system providing a patch for current HEAD-Trunk of CVS.

Before releasing a first version I'm trying to get the patches to 3.3-CVS-HEAD:

• Provide widget independent Table/TreeViewer implementations
• Double click behavior for tableviewer
• TableViewer-Enhancement for Editing

The current features/bug fixes against 3.2:

• different cell-editors per row in same column
• custom-tooltip support
• VIRTUAL support in TableViewer
  

This project will only continue until 3.3 is out afterwards people will need to recompile their code replacing at.bestsolution.jface32.* through org.eclipse.jface.*.

At the end please note the following things:

• this is nothing official from Eclipse and I only thought that there are maybe others who have the same needs than I have.
• There's a great likelihood that new API added in 3.3 at some point will change while 3.3 evolves so the API you find now is maybe a subject to change in the next release.

Viewers-Refactoring

Banging my head against Viewers since about a month we finally reached a state where it's possible the first time to use viewers with different widget than org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Table. At the moment only TableViewer supports widget independency but once this is in head. TreeViewer is the next to come.