1 What’s in e4 Tom Schindl, Boris Bokowski, Kai Tödter, Hallvard Traetteberg, Yves Yang

1

What’s in e4Tom Schindl, Boris Bokowski, Kai Tödter,

Hallvard Traetteberg, Yves Yang

2

e4

“The mission of the e4 project is to build a next generation platform for pervasive, component-based applications and tools.”

e4 – (Historic) Facts

2008 Announcement of new project idea short before

EclipseCon First mock up presentation at Eclipse 2008 e4 Summit in Ottawa (22nd / 23rd May)

Project groups formed The modeled workbench was born

e4 – (Historic) Facts

2009 Release of e4 0.9 as a tech-preview

Backed up by an live EMF Modeled Application Backwards compatibility layer to host important unmodified

parts of 3.5 in an e4 workbench (JDT, CVS) Support for Declarative Styling Embedding of WebUIs

e4 – Why? Why now?

The current code is hard and is getting harder to maintain

Different MVC implementations Legacy code because of historic platform limitations

Shell

MenuBar

CTabFolder

PackageExplorerHierarchy

Shell

MenuBar

CTabFolder

PackageExplorerHierarchy

e4 – Why? Why now?

New competitors in RCP RIA-Frameworks like Flex, Sliverlight, JavaFX GWT, Ajax-Frameworks (Qooxdoo, Ext-Js, …)

New UI-Requirements Shift away from native looking UIs to „flashy“ UIs with

gradients, ...

e4 – Project Overview

Modeled Application Core Services

e4-Core

DI, EclipseContext

Workbench + RenderingEngineDeclarative Styling

e4-Addons

XWT

TM

Flexible Resources

WebUI

...

8

Rational Software | Eclipse

© 2009 IBM CorporationIBM Confidential8

e4

Place for innovation

Not a product

e4 technologies will be used as the basis of Eclipse 4.0

Some e4 technologies will end up in 3.x

Eclipse 4.0 SDK may not include all technologies explored as part of e4

9

Programming Model

Pull together and simplify the important APIs– “Eclipse Application Services”

– focus on client API (separate from SPI)

Dependency Injection– static keyword verboten (no Singletons)

API should map easily to other languages– e.g., JavaScript

– avoid subclassing across component boundaries

– avoid Java-isms

10

Why “application services”?

API surface has grown a lot

Important APIs are hard to identify (wheat / chaff)

Need a small set of “most important” Eclipse API

And, there are new requirements– E.g. embed pieces of web UI in Eclipse as first class

components



11

Eclipse Application Services (“Twenty Things”)

Editor lifecycle

Receiving input

Producing selection

Standard dialogs

Persisting UI state

Logging

Interface to help system

Menu contributions

Authentication

Authorization

Long-running operations

Progress reporting

Error handling

Navigation model

Resource management

Status line

Drag and drop

Undo/Redo

Accessing preferences



12


© 2009 IBM CorporationIBM Confidential

Contexts and Dependency Injection

“Context”– Locates services and provides them to consumers– Maps keys to values where values can be computed, w.

pluggable lookup– Interoperable with OSGi service registry

Dependency Injection– Constructor, method and field injection– Identified by Java annotations (JSR 330)– Eliminates dependencies on containers

12

13

Example Code

public class ExampleView {

@Inject ExampleView(Composite parent, IWorkspace workspace, IMemento persistedState) {

// ...

}

@Inject setInput(IResource input) {

// ...

}

}

e4 – Modeled Application

e4-Applications are backed up by an live EMF-Model


org.eclipse.e4.workbench


The concept of renderers

EMF-Workbench-Model

AbstractRenderer

org.eclipse.e4.workbench.renderer.swt

SWTRenderer

at.bestsolution.e4.renderer.qtjambi

QTRenderer

SynchronizeContribute



Kai TödterSiemens Corporate Technology

© Kai Tödter and others, Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Germany License.

2004/20/23 20© Kai Tödter and others, Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Germany License.



23

Label { font: Verdana 8px; color: rgb(240, 240, 240);}

Table { background-color: gradient radial #575757 #101010 100%; color: rgb(240, 240, 240); font: Verdana 8px;}

ToolBar { background-color: #777777 #373737 #202020 50% 50%; color: white; font: Verdana 8px;}


24

Menu bar backgroundTable headers

Partly implemented:Gradients

Planned:Having similar capabilities compared

with WebKit’s gradients


25



e4 R0.9 - Web Integration

We are seeing a mix of web and desktop UIs– Similar but different

– Need appropriate experiences

– Solution: re-use components, not applications

(Sub-)work areas:– JavaScript modularity

– JavaScript debugging

– Web to desktop

– Desktop to web

25

26



JavaScript Modularity

JavaScript modularity framework based on OSGi concepts– Runs as a nested framework within an OSGi instance

– Bundle and script file level dependencies (using JSON)

– Communicate with Java via OSGi services or Eclipse extensions (and EAS)

Needed for building enterprise-grade web applications

Status: Done, but needs to be stressed/used more

26

{ "Bundle-SymbolicName":"sample.jsbundle", "Bundle-Version":"1.0", "Bundle-ScriptPath":"script.js", "Import-Package":"a.resource;version=[1.0.0,2.0.0)", "Export-Package":"sample.resource;version=1.0.0", "Require-Bundle:"some.other.bundle", }

27

JavaScript Debugging

Implemented a debug runtime for Rhino (extensible to other VMs)

working on full, integrated JavaScript debugging for Eclipse (including Java/JS boundary crossing)

Working with ATF to support Mozilla based runtimes

Expect to be able to support Chrome

Have integrated with JSDT to set breakpoints, etc.

28



Embedding Web UIs (Web to desktop)

28

Run web components on the desktop

Uses the SWT Browser control– Backed by IE, Mozilla, or Safari– Improved API for Java-JavaScript interop in 3.5

Eclipse as an OpenSocial Gadgets container

Provide first class interoperability with Eclipse– EAS / “20 things”

• E.g. standard dialogs, progress reporting, preferences, selection...

– Make available to embedded pages via JS

29

OpenSocial Gadgets

30



e4 R0.9 Clone of PDE Site Editor

30

31

TM – Motivation

Hand-coding GUIs is hard– GUI frameworks can be complex– conceptual gap between concrete GUI and the GUI code

What works?– GUI builders are very useful for part of the design task

• ... but handles only look & feel, behavior must still be coded– HTML+DOM+Javascript has caught on

• ... but XML is not the best tree-structured data model around– Model-based techniques are maturing and more wide-spread

• ... but has not really been successfully applied to UIs (until now?)

Can a combination of these be used for e4?

32

TM – model and architecture

Ecore-based model of GUI elements– hierarchy of widgets– simple elements – label, text field, buttons, list, ...– composites – generic, group box, tab folder, ...– coming soon:

• table and tree widgets• styling with CSS• 2d graphics

– natural extension of modeled workbench UI

EMF API & tools are used to manage TM instances– Java code with static and reflective API– generic editors and model-based techniques– transform with ATL, store with Teneo, share with CDO ...

33

Tree-based editor with preview

36



e4 R0.9 - Flexible Resources

Solve some real-world problems, w.r.t. constraints on the layout of projects in the workspace

Implemented to be backwards compatible with R3.x

Enhancements:– Define variables at project level, with linked resources relative to them

– Groups == virtual folders of links to resources elsewhere on disk

– Exclusion filters on projects and folders

– Creation/manipulation of linked resources via D&D• e.g. drag file tree onto Eclipse can create links and groups

– Edit link locations; convert links between absolute and variable relative

Work underway to graduate this work in 3.x (3.6 target)

36

37



What’s next

“Eclipse SDK R4.0” to be delivered July 2010

Goals– All SDK R3.6 plug-ins hosted and running

– Ready for wider consumption

But(!) this is the first release of a significantly new codebase– It will not be on the Helios release train

• Early adopters in community will be moving

– Need significant real-world testing• Help us make the compatibility bulletproof

Expect to be on 2011 release train– Requirement: All other release train projects run

38

XWTEclipse XML Windowing Toolkit

Yves YANG (Soyatec)[email protected]

39

AgendaAgenda

What is XWT?

Architecture

Key features

Q&A

40

What is XWT?What is XWT?

XWT stands for XML Windowing Toolkit. It is a XML based UI declarative solution for eclipse.

XWT targets to be a UI Presentation Foundation for eclipse by providing:

A common infrastructure that enables UI tools to work together

Component assembling application development environment

41

SWT JFace JFace Data Binding …

Abstraction / DomainAbstraction / Domain

Technical Developer

Domain Developer

Model Designer

TechnologyTechnology

XWT

ModelingToolsVisual

DesignerUI CodeEditor

42

Product overviewProduct overview

ImplementationImplementation

ToolsToolsEMF

Technical Developer

Domain Developer

Model Designer

43

ArchitectureArchitecture

44

Key featuresKey features

Runtime In SWT/JFace

Full integrations– JFace Data Binding

– CSS

– e4 workbench

– Eclipse RCP 3.x

Reusable Presentation Component

High extensibility

WYSIWYG Designer

45



Further reading

“Eclipse has a future.”– http://dev.eclipse.org/blogs/mcqjustmcq/2009/07/25/eclipse-has-a-future/

“White Paper: e4 Technical Overview”– http://eclipse.org/e4/resources/e4-whitepaper.php

Websites:– e4 Wiki -- http://wiki.eclipse.org/E4

– e4 Homepage -- http://eclipse.org/e4

45

http://wiki.eclipse.org/E4

http://wiki.eclipse.org/E4

46



Comments? Questions?

47

Why change?

“We’ve already built all our plug-ins.

The most important thing is don’t break us.”

(Yes, there will be a compatibility layer.)

48

Francois Schnell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/frenchy/30217773/

Documents

1 What’s in e4 Tom Schindl, Boris Bokowski, Kai Tödter, Hallvard Traetteberg, Yves Yang