Modular Mind

There was so much going on at EclipseCon last week that I have to admit my head is still spinning. I’m trying to get back to work, but my mind keeps turning to the people I met and the sessions I attended.

One area I really wanted to get into at EclipseCon was e4, which is the project that is attempting to redefine the Eclipse platform. The work being done is varied and fascinating, and I’ve been trying to figure out what it all means at a high-level. Well from what I’ve learned so far, the two main focuses of e4 are flexibility and simplicity.

Flexibility

The platform is becoming more flexible in so many ways, it would be hard to list them all. But here are a few examples:

• Internal structure of workbench window is up to you. Use perspectives or not. Embed parts in other parts, etc.
• Much stronger styling support using style sheets.
• Ability to create widgets and parts using different toolkits and even different languages.

One thing is clear – e4 is going to drastically increase our options when developing RCP applications.

Simplicity

The platform is becoming simpler in that the platform framework is being broken down into smaller and more uniform APIs that are loosely coupled to each other. Examples of this are:

• Increased focus on POJOs throughout the various APIs.
• Decoupling of APIs through contexts and dependency injection.

I really do think that it will be easier to develop RCP applications after these changes are made. Hopefully it will make my job as an RCP trainer easier too!

The conflict between flexibility and simplicity

“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.”

Sir Charles Anthony Richard Hoare

What’s interesting is that flexibility and simplicity are usually in conflict. In framework design, we usually trade flexibility for simplicity and vice-versa. So how will the e4 team pull this off?

The answer lies in the idea of insightful simplicity. There are many types of simplicity, and some are not at all useful to software developers. But insightful simplicity arises when a team has lived with and understands a domain so thoroughly that they start to see the problem space in an entirely new way. Insightful simplicity can result in architectures that are not only simpler but that dramatically increase flexibility, enabling developers to create entirely new types of applications.

Insightful simplicity usually arises only after an initial framework has been created and evolved for an extended period of time. Frameworks tend to expand and get more complex as new use cases are incorporated, but eventually there comes a point when a team starts to see how the entire thing can be collapsed and simplified. This is where we’re at with the Eclipse platform, and the e4 team is now taking this insight and turning it into a reality.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what going to happen when developers get a hold of this technology. It’s going to be amazing!

In my opinion, one of the best ways to learn about a technology is to listen to people talk about their own projects. Developers who have been in the trenches and worked through the nitty-gritty day-to-day issues have so much to teach us and can save us a lot of time and effort.

If you agree, I hope you’ll consider attending the Real World RCP session at this year’s EclipseCon. If you do attend, you’ll hear 4 developers talk about some extremely interesting RCP usage scenarios, including earthquake damage simulation and nuclear plant testing. You’ll also hear about how RCP can be combined with a variety of other technologies, including CNF, EMF, and GEF to solve real-world problems.

So stop by Wednesday morning! If you’re currently working with RCP or evaluating it for a future project, I think this session will be worth your time.

For an upcoming project I need to be able to show Flash videos inside of an RCP application. Java has never been known for its multimedia functionality so I didn’t have very high hopes.

Fortunately, with Java Media Components things seem to be moving in the right direction. JMC is an API that allows you to play media files using the video functionality of the underlying operating system (there is work being done to provide cross-platform codecs along with the API, but it’s unclear how extensive this will be). JMC is distributed as part of the JavaFX platform, but it can function independently inside of a regular Swing application.

Using this recent article as a guide, I managed to create an Eclipse plug-in that contributes a very rudimentary video player view to Eclipse or any other RCP application. If you’d like to try it yourself, click here for the source code (exported project). Note that the current code only works on Windows.

Above you can see a Flash video of Wipeout playing inside of my Eclipse IDE. Wipeout is my 5-year old daughter’s favorite show (if people are falling down, she’s laughing), so after 20 years as a software developer I’ve finally written some code she’d be interested in!

One thing to note is that JMC relies on the codecs installed on your machine. There have been some complaints that JMC is not finding or utilizing the codecs most people have installed, and hopefully this situation will improve. If you find that you’re getting MediaUnsupportedException errors when opening files, you may want to install a codec pack. The CCCP pack seems to work for most people.