e4 – News from the model tooling

I’ve been busy working on my model editor and some wizards to create Java-Classes for our new programming model.

New features in the model editor

New Drag&Drop Support in the Left Tree: You can now drag around items in the tree to reorder them
Support for Copy, Paste and Cut: You can now use the common known Keyboard-Shortcuts CTRL (CMD)+C,V,X
Open a contribution implementation: Contributions like Handlers, Part and Addon can now open the class having the implementation can be opened with one click
Create a contribution class through a wizard: By clicking the same Link-Label as above with no current contribution you get presented a wizard to create a typical implementation for the given contribution type.

e4 Wizards

The second important thing is that I added a set of new wizards who allow you to create an e4-Application (I factored this out from Yves cool Visual E4 Workbench Model Designer) and individual parts of it of an e4 application.

Model
- Create an Application-Model: As you might already know an e4-Application from a simple RCP to the fullblown Eclipse SDK stores all relevant informations inside one place named application model
- Create an Application-Model-Fragment: A model fragement can be compared to what you do today using the various extension points (views,editors,menus, commands, ….) but because the workbench itself already defined the types it is working with (incontrast to 3.x) you use 100% the same entities to contribute to the model. This allows you to make up an application model from various different bundles who contribute fragments.
Classes
- New Addon Class: An addon is a none visual contribution who typically only wants to plug itself in the to EventBus of an application
- New Handler Class: A class which is executing a business logic when a user action is triggered by a command or a direct menu or toolbar item
- New Part Class: A class who is responsible to make up the content of a Part in your application (e.g. the JavaEditor, PackageExplorer, …)