README.txt
1WINDOWBUILDER PROPERTY SHEET LIBRARY
2-------------------------------------
3
4This project is a fork of a subset of the WindowBuilder Eclipse
5plugin: http://www.eclipse.org/windowbuilder/
6
7Specifically, it contains the subset of WindowBuilder related to the
8propertysheet, intended for reuse in AOSP by the ADT plugin.
9
10The fork was modified as follows:
11* Started with revision 424 from the trunk:
12 http://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/tools/org.eclipse.windowbuilder/trunk
13
14* Extracted the property package from org.eclipse.wb.core:
15 src/org/eclipse/wb/internal/core/model/property
16 and then everything it transitively references. This turns out to
17 be a lot. I then started pruning out references to code we don't
18 need, such as support for editing Java constructs such as enums, or
19 dealing with a Java code model, etc. This means some of the files
20 have been edited to remove methods and fields. For example, the
21 property category code was modified to no longer support the
22 persistent storage of categories.
23
24* The WindowBuilder code depended on a number of Apache Commons
25 libraries such as collections, lang, etc. Since ADT already uses
26 Guava, which provides a lot of the same functionality, I replaced
27 all the Commons calls with Guava calls in order to avoid having to
28 make ADT depend on (and load at runtime) the Commons libraries.
29
30* Finally, the propertysheet code was made into a library instead of a
31 plugin, such that it can be loaded into the ADT plugin. This meant
32 mostly rewriting the DesignerPlugin class. It has kept its name
33 (since a lot of code references it for logging, resource loading
34 etc), but it is no longer an actual plugin. Instead it has init and
35 dispose methods for use by the AdtPlugin, and for logging it
36 delegates to the ADT plugin, etc.
37
38* Icons were moved into the DesignerPlugin package such that the
39 resource loading code could use a relative path, since with an
40 absolute path it would be looking in the embedding plugin's
41 resources.
42
43* To be consistent with the ADT codebase, I converted the files from
44 \r\n to \n newlines. Other than that, all formatting was left
45 unmodified.
46
47* Removed unused resources such as unreferences colors from
48 IColorConstants, unneeded messages from ModelMessages, and so on.
49
50* Note also that this Eclipse project is using a modified version of
51 the standard ADT Eclipse compiler settings: methods overriding other
52 methods and interfaces *without* using an @Override annotation are
53 ignored, since they were not using @Override annotations in the
54 WindowBuilder source base.
55
56
57ADT ENHANCEMENTS
58------------------
59* I also modified the propertysheet in a few ways to add features
60 needed by ADT. These are all bracketed in the codebase with
61 // BEGIN ADT MODIFICATIONS
62 ...
63 // END ADT MODIFICATIONS
64
65 Specifically, I made the property table able to expand all and
66 collapse all. Properties have sorting priorities, and have separate
67 name and title attributes (and tooltips show the property name
68 rather than the title.) Text property editors allow field completion
69 by providing IContentProposalProvider (and optionally
70 ILabelProvider) instances via their getAdapter method. And the
71 property table will color values differently based on whether the
72 property is modified. (This allows us to draw default attributes
73 differently). Finally, the propertysheet now supports "expand by
74 default" (and for certain categories to be excluded, such as
75 deprecations).
76
77WINDOW DOCKING
78---------------
79
80The window docking support (the "FlyoutControlComposite" and
81supporting classes) was also included, since it's used to present the
82property sheet view in ADT. This code was also modified in a couple of
83minor ways, using the same modification markers as above:
84- Support invisible children (where the whole flyout is hidden)
85- Added a "dismiss hover" method used to hide a temporary hover
86 (needed when the hovers are used with native drag & drop)
87- Added a listener interface and notification when window states chane
88 (used to auto-zoom the layout canvas when windows are collapsed or
89 expanded).
90- Changed the sizeall cursor used for dragging composites from the SWT
91 SIZE_ALL cursor to the HAND cursor since (at least on Mac) the
92 cursor looked wrong for docking.
93
94UPDATES
95--------
96
97We should keep an eye on the propertysheet code in WindowBuilder and
98migrate bug fixes and feature enhancements. To do that, first check
99out revision 424 from
100http://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/tools/org.eclipse.windowbuilder/trunk
101That's the same baseline that this fork was based on.
102You can limit the checkout to just the org.eclipse.wb.core tree.
103
104Then check out the newest revision of WindowBuilder in a separate
105directory.
106
107Now diff the two trees. Look for diffs in the packages related to the
108propertysheet; this is going to be the packages that are present in
109this library. If any of the diffs are related to the propertysheet or
110supporting code, apply them to this library, and then update this
111document to contain the new baseline revision (use 'svnversion .' to
112get the number). Note that the diffs may need some rewriting if they
113reference Apache Commons code.
114
115Note that the ComponentsPropertiesPage.java class which is the main
116window in WindowBuilder is not used in our implementation; we instead
117have the PropertySheetPage class in ADT, so changes in that class
118should be checked to see whether they apply to our property sheet page
119(which uses the PropertyTable in a similar way, but obviously is based
120around our own UI model rather than the WindowBuilder ObjectInfo
121model.
122