Hi Michael,
To answser your question, I guess it would be possible to migrate a subset of the StyledText widget API. Of course, providing the exact public API, based on RAP, will open up the way to integrate various SWT components, including many of the text editors we use today in RCP. The idea is pleasant, but (i) the challenge is high, and (ii) it has to take into account the specificity of client/server interactions.
(i) As you may have probably noticed, the current widget is based on an integration with Cloud9 ACE editor, therefore, mapping the Java API to the _javascript_ API of ACE would be the way to go. How far can we go in this direction is constrained by the level of detail of the ACE API. That said, the granularity of the ACE API [1] is high enough to make it happen; it would be possible to map the the majority of the public methods and synchronize/notify the backend following the RAP interaction model.
(ii) However, because we are in a client/server interaction model, one should be aware of performance and scalability: for example, notifying back the server at each fine-grained-user-interaction with the widget will certainly overhead the network traffic.
I think a balanced approach is preferred by far, i.e. splitting the processing between the client and the server would be much more efficient. The consequence of this approach is that third party SWT components which rely on non-migrated methods won't work out-of-the-box. In this scenario, integrating these SWT components would be done on a case-by-case basis.
Regards,
Amine
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Amine Lajmi, PhD
Managing Director & MDE Expert
Mobile: +33623756198 (preferred)
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Email : amine@xxxxxxxxxxx
www.plugbee.com
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