Re: Neat features in Eclipse editor

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Chong" == Chong Yidong <address@hidden> writes:

>> * "Perspectives" are named persistent window configurations.  We have
>> had the window configuration mechanism in GNU Emacs since the
>> beginning but we have never developed a good user interface to take
>> advantage of them.  Eclipse's user interface seems to be good.

Chong> What kind of user interface does Eclipse provide for this?

The user interface for a perspective is that there is a list of
perspectives on a toolbar-ish thing (the overflow turns into a
dropdown menu).  Clicking switches perspectives.

As I recall for some operations, Eclipse will automatically switch
perspectives for you.  I think the first time it will ask if you want
this behavior in the future; e.g. if you run the debugger, it will
switch to the debug perspective and ask if you want to always do that
when debugging.

In a perspective you can rearrange the various sub-windows; Eclipse
just remembers where you put everything, plus what is open or closed.

In case it matters, in Eclipse a perspective is more than just an
Emacs window configuration; a perspective can change the content of
various views.  Perspectives tend to be kind of heavyweight, as well.

E.g., in the Java perspective, the file browser thingy will by default
show a java package/class-based view rather than a strictly file-based
view.

At least, this is my recollection.  I haven't used Eclipse this past
year, but I did use it daily for a couple years before that.

Most distros package Eclipse these days.  It isn't hard to give it a
whirl :-)

Tom