Yep, and, as I said, I can see the point of it. "almost API" just kind of jumped out at me. Is that the opposite of "internal API" :)
But, in all seriousness, I was just asking because I didn't know status of various packages and their API-ness or how the team defines "provisional API". And now that "4.2 is mainstream" it is good that e4 APIness gets some focus. Maybe it would be helpful to have a clear statement of "API plans" and communicate it well, for example, on cross-project list? (And, apologies, if there already is one, and I'm just not aware of it). As far as I know, no one on the release train is writing directly to e4 APIs ... but ... it is hard to know, and some might be (I know BIRT once mentioned they planned to ... but, that was from a casual conversation long ago, and I am not sure of their current plans for Juno). For example, a statement such as following might help establish the right message (rewritten by e4 committers to be accurate! :) "writing to the API compatibility layer will (continue) to be stable, but until now, the e4 packages have been provisional API, and might evolve some still during Juno, and then become API in M5 API freeze. If you write anything directly to APIs in e4 packages, you should follow xyz list to catch announcements or discuss issues and make suggestions about e4 packages in Eclipse 4.2". And ... I say vaguely "xyz list" above on purpose ... at what point do "4.2 issues" (about e4 packages/apis) start to be discussed/announced on the regular eclipse-dev or eclipse-ui-dev lists and e4-dev left for pure "e4 incubator" discussions? Its already kind of confusing (to community) where e4 ends and Eclipse 4x begins so I'd think anything in Eclipse 4x (even if from e4 package) should be treated as mainstream. But ... I know there's some years long history here I'm not aware of, so not sure what or when to change list focus. Maybe, if clearer to community, the e4-dev list left as is, and ask for new e4-incubator-dev list? Then e4-dev list used for "writing e4 native applications, without the compatibility layer" or similar. Again, just suggestions from "first impressions" as I started following this list. Thanks, From: Eric Moffatt <[email protected]> To: E4 Project developer mailing list <[email protected]> Date: 09/23/2011 10:17 AM Subject: Re: [e4-dev] Suggestion to restructure UIEvents to increase clarity and performance Sent by: [email protected] I hadn't seen this when I wrote my previous reply... I do take the 'API' issue seriously and even it it's just tacitly API now I realize that breaking existing e4 users is not good which is why I suggested that this be put on the mailing list... To me this is a 'performance improvement....for the developer subscribing to events...;-), Eric From: David M Williams <[email protected]> To: E4 Project developer mailing list <[email protected]> Date: 09/22/2011 10:46 PM Subject: Re: [e4-dev] Suggestion to restructure UIEvents to increase clarity and performance Sent by: [email protected] Well ... since you asked for opinions ... doesn't seem worth it to me ... but, does not seem all that bad to do so, if important to you (that is, I see your point) ... but, not that bad the way it is (to me). The part that caught my attention was "... since this class is essentially API, if we don't change it now, we will never be able to make the change." It sure looks like API to me already (not almost API) so ... is it stated somewhere (and, more important, is it accepted, common knowledge) that things in e4 packages are not API yet? Seems like it is just good discipline to assume they are API, if they are "provisional API" ... unless there is a required technical reason to change it. I suspect the performance difference would not be measurable (once JIT compiled it) ... but ... if you have data that shows the performance improvement, that might make it defensible? my 2 cents worth From: Dean Roberts <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Date: 09/22/2011 03:39 PM Subject: [e4-dev] Suggestion to restructure UIEvents to increase clarity and performance Sent by: [email protected] While trying to understand UIEvents and how the topics are built up for subscribe operations I found the buildTopic() methods a little cumbersome and a barrier to understanding what was really going on. I would like to make a suggestion that I think would 1) Make the code look cleaner 2) Make the concepts clearer 3) Improve run time performance (albeit marginally) For illustration purposes, here is an example of an interface definition from UIEvents for the UIElement model object generated by GenTopic public static interface UIElement { public static final String TOPIC = UIModelTopicBase + "/ui/UIElement"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String ACCESSIBILITYPHRASE = "accessibilityPhrase"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String CONTAINERDATA = "containerData"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String CURSHAREDREF = "curSharedRef"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String ONTOP = "onTop"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String PARENT = "parent"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String RENDERER = "renderer"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String TOBERENDERED = "toBeRendered"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String VISIBLE = "visible"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String VISIBLEWHEN = "visibleWhen"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String WIDGET = "widget"; //$NON-NLS-1$ } To subscribe to an event that tracks a UIElements visible change you would write eventBroker.subscribe(UIEvents.buildTopic(UIEvents.UIElement.TOPIC, UIEvents.UIElement.VISIBLE), visibilityHandler); To subscribe to all changes to UIElement you would write eventBroker.subscribe(UIEvents.buildTopic(UIEvents.UIElement.TOPIC), visibilityHandler); I think it would be much nicer to write, for the first case, eventBroker.subscribe(UIEvents.UIElement.VISIBLE), visibilityHandler); or, for the second case, eventBroker.subscribe(UIEvents.UIElement.ALL), visibilityHandler); To make this possible I propose that we would generate the UIElement interface definition like this. public static interface UIElement { public static final String ALL= UIModelTopicBase + "/ui/UIElement/*"; //$NON-NLS-1$ public static final String VISIBLE = UIModelTopicBase + "/ui/UIElement/" + "visible"; //$NON-NLS-1$ ... } This would allow us to delete two of the buildTopic() methods. We could leave the 3 argument version of buildTopic() to retain construction of topics that filter based on event type ( although nobody calls this internally at this time so do we really need it?). The code would also be more efficient as we would be removing method calls that do string concatenation with simple static references. In fact, I believe the compiler will just in line the references at compile time. Although I would be a fan of simply making these changes and requiring consumers to make a few small simplifying changes, we could provide a stepping stone by regenerating the new shape, deprecating the buildTopic() methods and all the TOPIC fields. We would then change the implementation of the buildTopic methods to return the appropriate constant directly without concatenating. Admittedly there is higher priority work to be done but since this class is essentially API, if we don't change it now, we will never be able to make the change. And I think the clarity in the subscribe statements make the change worth it. This change seems to fit well with the Eclipse 4 mantra that simple things should be simple. I also believe the effort required to change GenTopic to generate the new shape is small, and I volunteer to create the patch. Admittedly changing the calling code to use the new shape is more wide spread, but a very simple task. Although an actual committer probably wants to do that work as it would be a LOT of patches to apply :-) What does the community think? Does it make sense? Am I totally off base? [email protected]_______________________________________________ e4-dev mailing list [email protected] https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/e4-dev _______________________________________________ e4-dev mailing list [email protected] https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/e4-dev _______________________________________________ e4-dev mailing list [email protected] https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/e4-dev
_______________________________________________ e4-dev mailing list [email protected] https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/e4-dev
