Jo, the lack of many 'standard' features is indeed one of the most important outstanding issues with pure e4 apps. Note that you can instead build a 3.x-style RCP app and gain access to everything but at the cost of including the *complete* compatibility layer. Note that we're currently working on mechanisms that should allow you access to e4 features like the application model in '3.x' apps so you shouldn't have to give up the 'good bits' in order to do this.
The basic problem is that almost every existing 3.x View / Editor and even most services have existing references to one of Workbench, WorkbenchWindow or WorkbenchPage. The goal is well defined; we need to refactor much of the existing 3.x based code into a shape that it would be capable of running inside an e4 app without incurring the extra expense of hauling in the rest of the system. This is mostly a timing / resource issue...we've *had* to be completely myopic on ensuring that 4.x fully supports the 3.x API otherwise we're not eclipse at all. Fortunately this effort is tapering off somewhat, meaning that we may finally have time to look at the issues involved. The ultimate goal is to essentially 'de-construct' the current 3.x code by breaking it into discreet components which are consumable by e4 directly (i.e. no compatibility layer needed). This is of course a *major* exercise and will require not only a lot of coding work but some 'up front' architectural design (so that folks willing to do the work have some sort of road map to work against). This will be an ongoing process, not something that can be done all at once but perhaps input like this can be used to help align the priorities of what gets attention first to match up with what e4 *products* are most sorely missing. Fortunately it naturally breaks down into fairly self-contained areas (like Help). Onwards, Eric Moffatt From: "Jo Grant" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Date: 02/01/2013 01:21 PM Subject: [e4-dev] Help System Sent by: [email protected] Sopot Cela suggested I cross post this from the forum... The e4 application model solves a lot of the problems we're hitting as we move our RCP based application into its 3rd release. I had already started prototyping the new UI and training my team when I discovered a major hole: no help system. I've search the web and these forums and mostly just found "yep, it's not there" responses. I can't release a professional product without an integrated help system. Especially as it was one of the most praised features of the previous two releases. I image just about anyone else wanting to use e4 is in the same boat. Does anyone have a status on this? Is there a working system that I haven't seen? Or a way to use the workbench based help without having to drag in the whole workbench model? Or is there a team or user group working on this, and what's their timetable? I really want to move my product to the e4 model, but my team doesn't have the resources to write or port the entire help system. If this has already been started, I might be able to argue for committing some of my resources to helping the effort out. (That's how open source is supposed to work, right?) Can anyone give me the status of this, or point me in the right direction? Cheers, Jo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jo Grant 550 King Street Senior Software Engineer Littleton, MA 01460 OpenPages install and config USA Cell: 617-648-6543 Office: 978-899-4836 e-mail: [email protected] _______________________________________________ e4-dev mailing list [email protected] https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/e4-dev
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