Eclipse4/API/UIModel

UI Model

The UI Model is used to describe the various components of an application's User Interface. This model is an abstract definition that is rendered into reality on a particular platform through the use of a presentation engine driving a set of renderers (usually but not limited to one renderer part UI Model type.

The model itself is based on EMF. One of the things that EMF does a really good job at is allowing multiple inheritance so the basic design of the model starts with low-level components that can then be aggregated into concrete classes.

The model itself is composed from a number of different type of elements which are used to define the 'concrete' UI elements (i.e. the ones that actually get rendered):

Mix-ins

Used to contain the attributes for different concepts such as label information or containment types. These will be useful when we eventually start to derive domain-specific models based on the current one.

Context

Dirtyable

Input

UIElement

UILabel

SnippetContainer

Containment Definitions

In order to facilitate the use of Java generics each container may only contain elements of a single 'type' (interface really). These elements represent the type that is legal in a given container. In order to make an element legal for a given container add that container's type as one of the mix-ins for the class being contained.

WindowElement - Elements that can be added to a Window's list of children:

• Part
• PartStack
• PartSashContainer

TrimElement - Elements that can be added to a TrimBar

• ToolBar
• ToolControl

PartSashContainerElement - Elements that can be added to a PartSashContainer

• Part
• PartStack
• PartSashContainer (it's recursive)

StackElement - Elements that can be added to a PartStack

• Part
• Placeholder

Concrete Classes

These define the true UI model as used to present an applicaton.

MApplication

  MWindow

  MTrimmedWindow

    MTrimBar (contained by an MTrimmedWindow but not in its list of children)

        MToolBar

        MToolControl