[udig-devel] Thinking in Eclipse 3.3 terms: renderer actions on resize.

[Adrian Custer <acuster@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hey all,

Eclipse 3.3 is *way* better in terms of usability than its predecessors
which may force us to re-think how we leverage our UI for user
productivity. 

Specifically, in eclipse 3.3, the maximize buttons have gotten *much*
more useful (quick and really get the rest out of the way) so that I've
actually started using them in the IDE. In uDig, I suspect we will all
start using these buttons as well. One issue arises
immediately---clicking the maximize/restore buttons on a map editor
triggers a re-render. 

I wonder if we could avoid that since it significantly reduces the user
experience. Jesse or others, can you think of a reasonable way to alter
the renderer extent or trigger rules so that this render pass is *not*
necessary? I imagine we might be able to render to a canvas the size of
the workbench plus some buffer---this would allow small changes to
window size, including maximize/restore, or small pans without any
rendering pass which should improve user experience.

If this doesn't strike enough of a chord to get anyone working on the
issue then I'll tackle it someday when I get all the way up the
application stack to the renderer. Today it's back to 
  products -- features -- plugins --extension points
and trying to understand 
  applications -- workbenchAdvisors/Configurators
to grok how users are expected to re-use uDig. Fun, fun, fun.

--adrian