I've been thinking some of the same things ... I've been giving a lot
of thought about Eclipse-as-a-service -- making a cocoa app that uses
the parts of Eclipse that are great (like its understanding and
handling of Java) but replacing the parts of it that sucks (like ...
everything else). It can be done in lots of ways -- either by having
Eclipse as the centerpoint, but only for Java editing, and it vends
out a service interface to the project; or, I could embed a VM in a
Cocoa app and call between them as needed (this is surprisingly easy
to do and actually works really well). As far as cross-platform ... I
don't really care about it. I'm not proposing killing WOLips or
anything dramatic like that -- it is what it is, I'm just thinking
about what tools I want to use to build apps ...
Don't read too much into this at this point. I've just been thinking
about it for a while.
> Eclipse's UI and behaviour will always be one of love/hate with
> people - 'cause it aims to do everything cross-platform etc. It's
> also bloated with so many plugins, some of which work well, some
> badly that it'll never feel like it's out of beta nor natural (as
> you say). I don't see this changing in big ways unless there's a
> radical change tool-wise, though to do so may sacrifice cross-
> platform options which are always the lowest common denominator.
> e.g., consider a webkit or IB plugin or something for editing non-
> java stuff.
>
> I wonder what the workflow would be like if things returned somewhat
> towards the way things used to be (with dedicated apps for view/
> model editing)... but in a new way... perhaps as a webkit or IB
> plugin or something. Then you could drop eclipse's bloat where it's
> not needed and perhaps tailor the experience more easily etc and
> perhaps move towards the whole experience being more visually driven
> which could potentially have some RAD benefits (ala rails). With a
> language like groovy backing things the whole experience could be
> very dynamic.
>
> Just thought I'd throw that out there seeing as you're thinking
> outside the box.. And hey, you've gotta have a reason for putting
> Gianduia to good use somewhere right? It'll surely need a good UI ;-)
>
>> Anyway ... I'm not sold on this, but Eclipse UI is the suck, so I'm
>> always looking a ways we can make it suck less.
>
> Cool.
>
> with regards,
> --
>
> Lachlan Deck
>
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