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Difference between revisions of "E4/Doc/Preferences"
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| − | The ability for users to customize application features | + | The ability for users to customize application features according to their individual requirements is often useful. Eclipse e4 provides a mechanism to persist and retrieve these customizations, or preferences, within a range of scopes. |
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| + | In the most common case, a user preference is simply a key-value pair that is associated with an Eclipse instance. For example, the preference that specifies that a user would like to have a tool tip displayed on startup could be stored as "showToolTip=true". | ||
== Relevant Terms == | == Relevant Terms == | ||
Revision as of 18:36, 15 March 2010
The evolution of this document is a collaborative effort between a team of students at the University of Manitoba and the wider Eclipse community. Details about the project can be found here and on our Blog.
Your input is not just welcome; it is needed! Please contribute as your expertise allows, while adhering to our template. To send your feedback and any questions or comments you may have please email us. Also, while we do our very best to be as accurate and precise as possible, it is worth noting that we are students with limited exposure to the Eclipse platform, so if you see any incorrect technical details please let us know.
The ability for users to customize application features according to their individual requirements is often useful. Eclipse e4 provides a mechanism to persist and retrieve these customizations, or preferences, within a range of scopes.
In the most common case, a user preference is simply a key-value pair that is associated with an Eclipse instance. For example, the preference that specifies that a user would like to have a tool tip displayed on startup could be stored as "showToolTip=true".
Relevant Terms
- Key - A key is a unique string identifier for a preference setting.
- Value - A value is the current preference setting associated with a key, within a specific scope.
- InstanceScope - An InstanceScope corresponds to the scope of the current workspace.
Motivation
Although managing preferences and preference scopes can become complex, e4 has streamlined the "80-percent" case where a preference within the current InstanceScope must be retrieved.
When greater control of preference behaviour is required, e4 maintains mechanisms to set scope and listen for changes to preferences. For example, a user may want to apply a preference to all workspaces within a single Eclipse install, to a plugin or set of plugins, or to a set of projects within a plugin. E4 permits this flexibility of preference scope, and allows any kind of order of scope chaining for cascading preferences.
Applicability
The use of preferences is common, and their applications are many:
- UI customization, including fonts, default windows and panes, and colors
- Application-level installation preferences, including the locations of libraries and tools
- Connectivity settings, including the locations of remote resources, protocol selections, and credentials.
- Application parameters, such as program schedules, and internationalization settings.