E4/Eclipse Application Services

Fundamentals

• Life cycle - initialization and disposal.
• Status handling (errors and warnings).
• Logging over and above status handling.
• Scheduling background work.
• Accessing preferences (mostly read access, but sometimes write access).
• Reporting status (think status line).
• Adapting objects.

Specific to UI Parts

• Receiving input.
• Producing selection.
• Persisting data (receiving persisted state, and producing persistable state).
• Managing shared resources (e.g. JFace LocalResourceManager).
• Connecting to the help system.
• Participating in Undo/Redo.
• Participating in editor lifecycle (units of saveability, dirtiness, saving, prompting to save).
• Updating enablement, labels, icons of menu and tool items.
• Registering command handlers.

Specific to Command Handlers

• Reporting progress and responding to cancellation requests.

Advanced

• Shell Provider (for properly parenting dialogs).
• Reacting to changes to the workbench model.
• Participating in label and icon decoration.
• Reacting to changes to the context (such as plug-ins that come and go).
• Dynamically contributing to the workbench model (e.g. tool items, menus, sub-parts).

Domain-specific

• IWorkspace.
• Database connection.
• Getting hold of the domain model, e.g. in the form of an EMF model.

Not Sure About These

• String comparison/collation.
• String localization.