Eclipse RCP Resources

Platform Plug-in Developer Guide
http://help.eclipse.org : 'Platform Plug-in Developer Guide' & 'Plug-in Development Environment Guide'

http://wiki.eclipse.org/

http://blog.eclipse-tips.com/2009/01/top-10-mistakes-in-eclipse-plug-in.html
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox/p2/Adding_Self-Update_to_an_RCP_Application
http://wiki.eclipse.org/RCP_FAQ

Platform News Groups
http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.platform
http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.platform.swt
http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.platform.rcp

Color Constants
http://blog.platinumsolutions.com/node/155

All your layout questions answered
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Understanding-Layouts/index.html

Implementing help
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-echelp/

Tutorials

Eclipse Corner Articles http://www.eclipse.org/articles/ : explaining concepts like drag and drop, views, ....

Commands overview:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Platform_Command_Framework[[BR]] http://wiki.eclipse.org/Command_Core_Expressions

Good introduction to the basic structure of an RCP project:
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-RCP-1/tutorial1.html
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-RCP-1/tutorial2.html
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-RCP-1/tutorial3.html

SWT layout tutorial:
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Understanding-Layouts/Understanding-Layouts.htm

Tabbed properties tutorial:
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Tabbed-Properties/tabbed_properties_view.html

Text editor:
http://www.realsolve.co.uk/site/tech/jface-text.php http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.platform.swt/msg19676.html

Content assist:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_How_do_I_add_Content_Assist_to_my_language_editor%3F

StyledText:
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/StyledText%201/article1.html

Extensively formatted tree viewer tool tips:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-forms/

Pre-fabricated properties view:
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Properties-View/properties-view.html

Using decorators to lay over an element's image, i.e. for warnings:
http://help.eclipse.org/help33/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/workbench_advext_decorators.htm

RCP and Maven:
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Eclipse-and-Maven2/index.html

Code Examples

http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/SWT-JFace-Eclipse/CatalogSWT-JFace-Eclipse.htm
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/JFaceSnippets
http://www.eclipse.org/swt/snippets

Eclipse Quirks

VERY STRANGE "OPEN EDITOR ACTION" BUG: when opening an editor w/ the command openEditor in the run() method of an org.eclipse.jface.action.Action subclass, the editor MUST have an icon defined in its plugin.xml Extension details. Otherwise, you'll get the following error: Unable to open editor, unknown editor ID: eu.etaxonomy.taxeditor.designproposal1.view.mpetestview.

Research

Data Binding

Several data binding frameworks exist for Java. IBM Developer Works gives a good overview. We focus on JFace, cause there is ready Eclipse support available:

• JFace Data Binding. Seems to require bound properties in the domain model objects through the Java Bean PropertyChangeSupport .
• http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/JFace_Data_Binding_Scenarios
• JFace Code snippets
• SWT Designer data binding support -> demo
• IBM Developer Works Tutorials: Understanding JFace data binding in Eclipse
  • Part 1: The pros and cons of data binding
  • Part 2: The basics of binding -> See attachment:IBM_DevWorks-jfacedb2.pdf for direct download
  • Part 3: Exploiting advanced features -> See attachment:IBM_DevWorks-jfacedb3.pdf for direct download

Model-View-Controller (general)

The following two articles describe an example of an MVC GUI written in Swing, but it nonetheless gets down to the nitty gritty of how MVC theory gets translated into code. http://www.javadude.com/articles/vaddmvc2/mvc1.html http://www.javadude.com/articles/vaddmvc2/mvc2.html

This is a good article, again for Swing, which runs EVERYTHING - i.e., in both directions - through the controller. http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javase/mvc/

I liked this one, his commenters didn't. http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/07/07/genericmvc.html

Only touches on MVC, but lots of good ideas for efficiently building a JFace tree. http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t53983.html?start=0

Undoable operations

Help entry

Field assist

A potential alternative to the SWT.StyledText widget's decoration and autocomplete is JFace field assist.