#Eclipse text editor download how to#
#Eclipse text editor download code#

The IDocument contains the text of your document, and can be used to query its structure. When working with JFace Text, the document you are editing works with an IDocument instance. We will also see that when adding additional features to the XML editor, such as error marking and content outlining, we will also need to add some enhancements to the XML editor class.

#Eclipse text editor download how to#

Understanding how to use the SourceViewerConfiguration and the DocumentProvider is necessary, so we will cover both later in the article. The second is an instance of the IDocumentProvider interface, which encapsulates the mechanism for creating a JFace Text representation of the document being edited from its source (such as a file in the file system). Its first delegate is a SourceViewerConfiguration class instance, which is used to add additional features to the editor's user interface. SetDocumentProvider(new XMLDocumentProvider()) SetSourceViewerConfiguration(new XMLConfiguration(colorManager)) public class XMLEditor extends TextEditor The Eclipse provided XMLEditor class itself does does not do much – it simply uses the base class functionality, and delegates the job of adding additional features. Normally, it would be most convenient to subclass TextEditor, which is what the provided XML editor does in a class named XMLEditor. The JFace Text framework is ordinarily used with an Eclipse text editor, for which the abstract base class is a AbstractTextEditor (package and plugin name). Part 2: Getting to Know JFace Text Text Editors Hopefully, however, I have learnt enough to know what is easy to achieve, and give some helpful indications on how to accomplish the more difficult bits. So you want all of these features and more, and what you have is the basic text editor source, where do you go from here? That's what this article is all about. What if we want to represent other parts of our document in this way? The basic text editor only provides colour differentiation for elements and attributes. Ideally, we even want to be able to format part of our document in isolation We want be able to format someone else's (or our own) messy XML into a nicely laid out document. We'd like to be able to use this mechanismįormatting support. Eclipse typically uses the 'Outline' view to provide a visual (usually tree-based) representation of our document, which we can use to navigate easily between different parts of the document. We've got a DTD, so why can't the tool use this to figure what bits of text you could add to a particular part of the document?Ī content outline. Normally Eclipse does this by squiggly red lines under the offending text, an error icon on the left hand ruler, and an entry in the 'Problems' viewĬontent assist. If we modify our document replacing some of the markup with random text, we want visual clues that the document is not well-formed. What's missing though, are some really useful features:Įrror marking. The XML editor is clearly more than just a text editor – it has syntax highlighting. Of course, you get all the source code, and the generated application is quite nicely written, so it makes an excellent starting point for learning the new technology.

The XML editor which Eclipse generates looks like this: Eclipse very kindly generates for you a working XML editor, albeit one which does very little. Here you check the box to create the plug-in using one of the templates, and select the template Plug-in with an editor.

Then follow the wizard screen until you get to the Templates selection as shown below: The first likely step for anyone intending to write an Eclipse editor plugin, and a JFace Text based editor in particular, is to create a new Eclipse Plugin Development Environment with the XML editor example as a template. Part 1: Setting the Scene The Application Before we talk in more detail about the APIs, lets set the scene by describing the application we are going to use. The artide is built around the default example XML editor provided as an Eclipse plugin development template. If you don't know what this is right now, don't worry, since this is one of the major areas covered in this article. For example, I struggled to find material which explains the document partitioning process very well. I wrote this article because found it difficult to find documentation on this impressive API. It is not an easy API to understand, but is very powerful. In my view, an understanding of JFace Text is very important for Eclipse developers because most Eclipse plug-ins involve a text editor of some kind.

#Eclipse text editor download code#

JFace Text is a sophisticated framework which allows an Eclipse plug-in developer to build text editors with advanced features, such as syntax highlighting, basic content assistance and code formatting.