Hi Stefan, That sounds quite good. Some thoughts...
There are some users (some technical users even) that often forget whether they are supposed to single click or double click to open an item. It might be a bit confusing for them (or just new users in general) if they double click an entry and end up with two views on the same entry.
I'm also thinking that if you have an option to disable the "entry view" you might as well also have an option to disable the "entry editor". You could have the entry editor disabled by default which would allow double clicking to expand / contract a container entry as it does now. With this you kill two birds with one stone - you don't have confusion with double click opening two editors and you don't lose the current expand / contract functionality. Even with this option the entry editor should be available from the context menu.
Finally, I think it would be useful if multiple entry editors could be opened for the same entry. There are times when I would like to take a snapshot of an entry then compare it to its state a little bit later on. I'm not sure if this is already the plan - I just wanted to bring it up since you mentioned "there is always one editor per entry".
Thanks, Martin Stefan Seelmann wrote:
Hi guys, thanks Pierre-Arnaud for bringing this to top. We already discussed on IRC about that problem. Today, while washing the dishes, I had an idea to solve the dilemma. Let me begin with a quotation from [1] about the Eclipse workbench concepts: View: ... Modifications made in a view are saved immediately. Editor: ... It is typically used to edit or browse a resource. ... Modifications made in an editor follow an open-save-close lifecycle model. So IMO we should consider the current "Entry Editor" (and also the "Search Result Editor") as view, although is lives in the editor area. It doesn't follow the open-save-close lifecycle model but saves modifications immediately. I'd like to bring the following points to discussion: We keep the current "Entry Editor" as is. We rename it to "Entry View" (view is a bad name but I can't find a better one). We add a new checkbox to the preferences: "Open 'Entry View' while browsing" which is checked by default. This way the current behaviour is kept. When unchecking the checkbox the "Entry View" isn't opened automatically. We add a new action "Open Entry View" to the context menu to open it. If opened it automatically loads and shows the attributes of the selected entry. The new extension point isn't used here. The open mode isn't used here. The new extension point only allows new editors that follow the open-save-close lifecycle model. These editors behave like normal Eclipse editors. There is always one editor per entry, so multipe editor could be opened. These editors use the open mode (double-click by default). There are two minor issues: - Currently on double click the entry is expanded/collaped and its children are shown/hidden. When the open mode is "double-click" we should disable the expand/collapse. - In single-click open mode both, the "Entry View" and the editor are opened. Maybe it makes sense to uncheck/disable the "Open 'Entry View' while browsing" checkbox in that case. My prefered setting would be the default: While browsing the "Entry View" is used to show the attributes and to do quick modifications. On demand I double-click the entry or select "Open with" from context menu and a new entry editor is opened. This could be used for larger modifications or to compare different entries. Another setting is to disable the "Entry View" thing. In that case there are multiple options to see the attributes: - double-click the entry, however this opens a real editor following the open-save-close lifecycle - select "Open Entry View" form context menu which opens the view I think this has less impacts to the current behaviour but allows huge improvments with new editors. Thoughts? Kind Regards, Stefan [1] http://help.eclipse.org/galileo/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/gettingStarted/qs-02b.htm
