| [ve-dev] extending visual editor |
Hi there: We've been working on an interface builder for Java for some time now over at http://developer.knownspace.org/fluency. This semester we decided to strike the old codebase and convert/refactor it into an Eclipse RCP project. Towards this end, it'd be great to be able to leverage _just_ the widget layout/graphical editing component of VE - we don't need the code generation/round tripping stuff due to the design of Fluency. In short, we want to add our own custom behavior behind the scenes when a widget is placed on the graphical editor. We still need to maintain a persistent notion of widget properties and layout, of course, but these get persisted as properties of the layout graph (or linkage graph in Fluency terms). I poked around the help files and these mailing list archives but was unable to find anything with my punee eyes. The help files appear to be only concerned with the extension of the widget palette that VE uses so that you can add your own custom widgets. So the enormously vague question that I have is.. What is the 'best' way to extricate the graphical editing and widget palette code from the rest of the codebase? I've checked out the code from CVS and have been poking around the org.eclipse.ve.java.core project, org.eclipse.ve.internal.java.codegen.editorpart.JavaVisualEditorPart looks like it should be my starting point but I haven't delved too deeply into it yet. At this stage in my investigation it seems like it'd be easiest to just rip out relevant code (with license/copyright of course) and modify it within the context of our app (the 'internal' part of the package name sounds out the big klaxon alarms in my head.. ;). In any case, any pointers to places to look or tips on what classes I should focus on would be tremendously helpful. Thanks for your time! Allen Lee
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