[TG-GHT]

Dear MyEclipse Support Team!

On September 13, 2011 I filed the follwoing issue with you

https://www.genuitec.com/forums/topic/windowbuilder/.

From the discussion there I learned that MyEclipse will finally drop

“MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” – aka Matisse / NetBeans GUI Builder

in favour of

“SWT Designer for MyEclipse” – formerly part of WindowBuilder
“Swing Designer for MyEclipse” – formerly part of WindowBuilder

So far I am very happy with all of this.

Currently I am working with

MyEclipse: 9.1
Build id: 9.1-20110701
Swing Designer for MyEclipse: 1.1.0

and lately tried to edit a visual compoment which inherits from “org.openide.windows.TopComponent”, i.e. the visual root component from which all GUI components displayed by a visual NetBeans Platform application have to be inherited. Unfortunately, though expected, proper visual editing of the component with “Swing Desinger for MyEclipse” is not possible.

With “MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” this has never been a problem as it actually is the NetBeans GUI Builder and therefore editing “org.openide.windows.TopComponent” based components is intrinsically supported.

Now my question:

Is there any chance that “Swing Designer for MyEclipse” will ever support editing of “org.openide.windows.TopComponent” based components?

I do not know anything about the inner workings of “MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” and so I cannot tell whether supporting “org.openide.windows.TopComponent” is a big deal or just a line of code. All in all it would be a shame to lose that functionality in the end. That is when
“MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” will be outdated or finally removed from the MyEclipse stack.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

[support-joy]

Thomas,

Thank you for your inputs and queries on Swing Designer for MyEclipse. I am afraid, this question is better suited to be answered by our Technical team. I shall escalate the same to them. They would get back to you on this.

[Scott Anderson]

Thomas,

Great questions. Here’s my shot at hopefully great answers.

Is there any chance that “Swing Designer for MyEclipse” will ever support editing of “org.openide.windows.TopComponent” based components?

There is always a chance, especially since Swing Designer is an integrated version of the OSS project at Eclipse. The best way to get the functionality you would like would be to file it into Bugzilla at Eclipse as an enhancement request against the WindowBuilder product in the Tools project. Naturally, the more detail you can provide to present a compelling case to the primary development team would give the enhancement a better chance of getting support there.

I do not know anything about the inner workings of “MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” and so I cannot tell whether supporting “org.openide.windows.TopComponent” is a big deal or just a line of code. All in all it would be a shame to lose that functionality in the end. That is when
“MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” will be outdated or finally removed from the MyEclipse stack.

We never plan to remove availability completely for the current release of MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer. At some point we may not make it part of the default “full” installation of MyEclipse (as it is now), but it will still be available for optional installation in the Software and Workspace Center.

[clayberg]

Just a quick update… org.openide.windows.TopComponent is supported in the latest WindowBuilder / Swing Designer integration build available from Eclipse.org.

[Scott Anderson]

Eric,

Thanks for that update; that’s excellent news!

So, Thomas if you want TopComponent support now you simply need to install the integration build that Eric was so kind as to provide a link for. That can easily be done from the Software Configuration Center in MyEclipse by providing the URL for the update site on the integration build download page. Of course, prior to installing the integration build you’ll need to uninstall Swing Designer for MyEclipse to avoid duplication of functionality.

Once the integration build ships as production, we’ll pick it up as part of our normal MyEclipse update process.

[TG-GHT]

Dear Scott,
Dear Eric,

!!! U N B E L I E V A B L E !!!

I posted this on Dec 01 and not even a week later there is the answer. You know what I really, really, really like you guys. This is what I call

!!! H E L P F U L !!!

I have just installed the WindowBuilder integration build for Eclipse 3.6 (Helios), as I am still running MyEclipse 9.1, from update site http://download.eclipse.org/windowbuilder/WB/integration/3.6/ and its true:

I am now able to edit “org.openide.windows.TopComponent”, isn’t that cool :-)))

Thanks to both of you and please take a look at my following two posts as I feel the need of directing one to each of you personally.

[TG-GHT]

Dear Eric,

I noticed Dec 06 to be your very first post on this forum. I wanted to point out that I am aware of that fact and the effort you made just to get the information accross.

Thank you very much because this is something which is certainly not to be taken for granted.

[TG-GHT]

Dear Scott,

… especially since Swing Designer is an integrated version of the OSS project at Eclipse. The best way to get the functionality you would like would be to file it into Bugzilla at Eclipse …

Thank you for reminding me of that fact. You know sometimes one can get a little bit confused where there is the right place to put one’s stuff. For sure you are perfectly right: if you want to see a feature in an Eclipse project simply file that issue with eclipse.org – best chances you’ll get it 😉

We never plan to remove availability completely for the current release of MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer.

With respect to this let me be a bit more precisely:

My idea was that “MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” works on a set of two files, one being the .java file and the other the .form file. Now as I understood it “MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” will be frozen in its current state and that freeze will be available in the future. Now if let’s say in one or two years time the XML grammar of the .form file changes it would be very likely that “MyEclipse Visual Swing Designer” would not be able to edit “TopComonents” which have been created with the current release of NetBeans GUI Builder then. That is without WindowBuilder supporting “TopComponent” you would have a hard time editing those “TopComponents” from within Eclipse/MyEclipse. For sure once edited the “TopComponent” within Eclipse/MyEclipse the .form file would be out of sync and trash but to be honest I always wanted to get rid of that file any way :-DDD

Once again thank you very much its always a pleasure to hear from you.

[Author]

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