the corner office : tech blog

• Container Description cannot be null. Grr.

• EclipseZone - Using Log4J in Eclipse Equinox/OSGi. OSGi fragments to bypass classpath and config loading issues.

• Synaptics touchpad stops working in new user session. Bah. Same issue on our Acer Aspire 5630. The Ctrl-Alt-F7 / Ctr-Alt-F9 switch avoids the problem, and is quicker, to boot.
• Set up a CVS server on Linux using xinetd. Ubuntu docs but configs the same across distros. I do this every time I set up a new cvs server, but can never remember the xinetd.d configs.
• Find out what version of Ubuntu you're running. Use lsb_release -a.

Getting started with Eclipse plug-ins: contributing to Eclipse. Eclipse is the first chunk of open source software (apart from Apache Axis last year) that I've made any real effort to look at under the hood, and unlike Apache Axis, is actually appealingly clean. It would be a fun exercise to track a few doable bugs and try to suss them out, and if not actually do something to fix them, at least see if I understand how other people fixed them.

• Virtual Tables and Trees (Eclipse Corner Article)
• Understanding Layouts in SWT (Eclipse Corner Article)
• [news.eclipse.platform.swt] What happened to the scroll bars?. Another mention of the fact that if you place a table within a layout using SWT, then the table's scrollbars could disappear. This happens with both RowLayout and GridLayout. Turns out that you need to specify a RowData or GridData object which explicitly constrains the size of the control, forcing the scrollbars to display. Why doesn't SWT just *know* that the control isn't fitting into the window? I'm not sure... since RowData requires you to set a specific size which isn't practical, you're pretty much stuck with creating a GridData object. This kind of thing works: table.setLayoutData(new GridData(SWT.FILL, SWT.FILL, true, true)) (see for eg. [news.eclipse.platform.swt] Re: Table Scrolling)
• Eclipse BugDay FAQ
• Eclipse Communication Framework Project Home Quote: "ECF is a framework for supporting the development of distributed Eclipse-based tools and applications. It can be used to create other plugins, tools, or full Eclipse RCP applications that require asynchronous point-to-point or publish-and-subscribe messaging."

Some links to revisit on a rainy afternoon...

• Develop a simple Web application with Apache Wicket and Apache Geronimo. When did Wicket become an Apache project? It's supposed to be nice and simple, worth looking into.
• Developing applications using the Eclipse C/C++ Development Toolkit. Haven't used CDT in a while, what cool things are in the most recent version?

I don't use it anymore, but I'll always have a soft spot for Gentoo. Not without its issues at the moment.

• EclipsePedia: Platform Command Framework: new way of doing things in Eclipse 3.3 (via)
• Eclipse articles at OnJava
  • Eclipse Plugins Exposed, Part 1: A First Glimpse
  • Eclipse Plugins Exposed, Part 2: Simple GUI Elements (both from 2005, but a gentle introduction)
  • Eclipse RCP: A Platform for Building Platforms 2006, Eclipse as a rich client.
• Tonny Madsen: Working with the menus extension point. Intro to new menus system in 3.3
• [news.eclipse.platform.rcp] EditorParts, doSave(), commands, and key bindings. Long thread on using built-in save actions and the like. Quick and dirty way from IEditorActionDelegate.run(IAction action) is something like form.getEditorSite().getPage().saveEditor(form, false), where you'd store / update form via IEditorActionDelegate.setActiveEditor().

Want to re-use Eclipse icons in my own projects. Extensions need a reference to the icons, to use them. I still have some unanswered questions, but gathered these links thus far.

• codehaus: Eclipse icons and a script to extract 'em all from CVS. Direct link to icon download.
• news.eclipse.platform forum question about new menu infrastructure and re-using built-in icon sets (follow-up suggests you still have to link to 'em in project)
• wiki.eclipse.org: UI Best Practices v3.x
• eclipse.org: UI Guidelines v2.1 (some interesting stuff may still be applicable).
• [news.eclipse.platform] Referencing another plugin in plugin.xml?: icon references need to be relative, so there's no easy way to reference icons in another plugin.

Now that I have a link blog, I look about me and see that presently, I have nothing worth linking to.