Can I use Eclipse for this?

Stark

I'm doing a project that involves creating a GUI to manipulate xml schemas at a graphical level. My lecturer was suggesting that Eclipse looks interesting, but their documentation is very very vague. Is Eclipse the right tool to use to create this kind of GUI?

aidan_walsh

I'm not sure what you mean by a graphical level? You mean moving elements on screen effects their XML-based values? What language are you using, I'm assuming Java but with Eclipse being renound for its versatility...

davej

Yeah It's pretty vague regarding what exactly you want to do. Are you creating a gui that essentially edits xml files ? Some sort of dtd or xml data browser ?

Whatever it is one thing you might consider is actually writing a plugin for eclipse that does what you want to do. Eclipse is designed in such a way that it is (relatively) easy to create add ons. Just stick to the interface, wire up the config files and drop your jar into the plugins directory.

davej

Hobbes

I am not aware of any Graphical plugin already available, but if you were to create such a thing yourself have a look at GEF -> http://www.eclipse.org/gef/

Eclipse does display XML files as a tree for you to edit btw.

EL_Toneh

http://www.eclipse.org/vep/

Helps with buildin GUIs not the best IMO tho. It might be better to get yourself a copy of JBuilder very easy to use.

JustAndy

Eclipse is just the ticket for your project.
What you need is to first check out the eclipse modelling framework - you can create a model of your XML document/schemas this way and it looks after the code generation for you.
To create your documents graphically you can go the SWT way but as this might be to granular so go with the graphical editing framework.
You might look at the examples included in both frameworks and more of interest to you IBM have a business process editor implemented in this fashion which outputs via EMF to create an XML document describing the process.
Me thinks there is more XML stuff you'd find interesting in the IBM contribution to the eclipse web tools project.

fragile

If you want design tools for creating and manipulating visual components then netbeans would be a much better choice IMO

Hobbes

Naaa Eclipse is much better.

fragile

Hobbes wrote:

Naaa Eclipse is much better.

great, a flame war

I really don't have enough experience with either to comment authoratively on this, but from what I understand netbeans has a built-in GUI designer, while eclipse just offers a 3rd party plugin that is nowhere near as good. I am not saying netbeans is better than eclipse, merely that it beats it as a GUI design tool.

Hobbes

There are a number of 3rd party plugins for GUI design, but he is looking more for modelling. I am not sure if netbeans does that or not but Eclipse you have EMF, GEF.

It already has a XML editor which shows the XML as a tree view.

Haven't use netbeans in a long time. Wasn't trying to get into war Just poking fun.