So it’s been > 6 months that we did an release of e(fx)clipse where is the first version form Eclipse.org
The short answer is
We have an IP-Problem
The long answer is
To make it super easy for our users to develop JavaFX applications we provide what I think is the most powerful JavaFX-CSS-Editor you get today because it knows all JavaFX-CSS properties, their values and format, is context sensitive … .
We’ve invested a lot of time into a metaformat we named cssext which can be seen as the DTD of a CSS-File where we retrieve the informations from. We did this because Oracle does only provide a handcrafted HTML-Document describing those informations which can not be used by any tool to provide anything meaningful – you are back in the good old days where you have a browser opened next to your IDE to browse the file.
Now the problem is that the license of the above document does not allow us to modify, distribute or display any part.
How can this problem be solved:
- Oracle puts the CSS interface description under a reasonable license
- The JavaFX team offered that we contribute the cssext-File to JavaFX
- It is published on a Web URL
- It is distributed as part of JavaFX
We don’t think 2.a and 2.b are viable solutions because 2.a requires you to have web access which sometimes is not available in companies, on the train, … and 2.b means we are bound to the Java release cycle to push out new features which is not acceptable.
We are grateful for the IP-Team at Eclipse to make us aware of this problem, we are frustated because this is a major step back for the e(fx)clipse functionality.
Oracle and the Eclipse IP-Team are discussing solutions but it will take another couple of weeks (and then another couple of weeks) until this gets resolved (or not resolved). I was holding back the release because I think the loss of this feature is a major loss for e(fx)clipse but I’m fed up now.
It was our best intention to give JavaFX developers a good (Eclipse) IDE experience to make it’s adoption more easy but if we are not allowed we can’t do anything but drop the ball on it (=the css tooling).
So to sum: If you are building applications on top of our runtime modules you are not affected by the above problem, this is only a problem of the JavaFX-CSS Tooling and it sucks!
Tomsondev Blog 
That is just sad – making documentation for opensource project available under a closed license.
Is there a IP bugzilla entry for this discussion ? would like to grok the arguments for/against this.
Sure CQ 7121
Hi Tom,
I’m in the Java SE PM team. I can’t see the CQ, so no idea what you’ve been told. I am working with Janet (eclipse IP team) on this. There’s a bug in the docs and we’ll fix it. It would be easy to fix, but I’m trying to keep your use case in mind as the simple and obvious fix won’t help what you’re trying to do.
Thanks for the feedback Donald, let’s hope you’ll find a solution to this issue.
Damn! I really hope (but I don’t believe), that Oracle will grant you the right (via another license) to still make use of the tooling, because I kinda like it and it would be a shame, if you needed to drop such a fine thing!
Maybe we should make Jonathan Giles aware of it – he mentioned you and e(fx)clipse a couple of times on http://fxexperience.com/ … What do you think? It wouldn’t hurt and since he’s an employee of Oracle and very active with OpenJDK/OpenFX…
Like I said Oracle & Eclipse people are talking (see Donalds reply) and I still have the hope that a solution can be found – I simply wanted to get out the message on why I can’t provide a release as of now although I promised since more than 2 months.
I know there’s some frustration in my post.
Yeah, I recognized the frustration… I really hope, that it will work out somehow! Good luck!!!
Sucks indeed, I very much like the JavaFX-CSS editor.
Thanks to the Eclipse IP team for being proactive. Any change from Oracle’s side will be of immense help for other tool developers too.
Hello Tom,
Thanks for what you and e(fx)clipse’s team have done !
I’m glad to hear that a release could be provided as soon as the IP problem will be solved … because we currently miss it in our projects 🙂
As the combination of Eclipse 4 RCP and JavaFX hit the spot, we are migrating to it, and a released version of e(fx)clipse will ease it a lot.
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